


All the Ways We Fall Together - McHanzo Week 2016

by leoandlancer



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Deadeye and Dragons, Domestic Fluff, Dragon!Hanzo, First Kiss, First Time Alone, Fluff, M/M, McHanzo Week, Mutual Pining, Protectiveness, Sharing a Room, Ultimate Swap, Whump, role reversale, sap
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-09-09 23:38:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8918023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leoandlancer/pseuds/leoandlancer
Summary: Written for the McHanzo Week 2016! Each day has a fun prompt and they'll be posted here.Day 1 - First Time: McCree and Hanzo alone for the first time together in a broken antique store at night, talking softly about memories and belonging in the lamplight.Day 2 - Domestic Life: Weeks on assignment turn into months while McCree and Hanzo share a tiny apartment, grow a beautiful indoor garden, bake pie, explore the city and decide to stay right where they are.Day 3 - Alternate Universe: Fairy Tale/Monster Hunter AU, McCree is a monster hunter on the run back home, Hanzo is a dragon who's waiting for him thereDay 4 - Role Reversal: McCree is invited to speak with his former colleagues and refuses back up. Hanzo goes instead, and it's McCree who comes to cover him.Day 5 - Young LoveDay 6 - Ultimate Swap: Hanzo poses a question to McCree when they're recovering on their off time. It comes back to him in reverse when McCree is the one asking, and his life is on the line.Day 7 - Holiday Season





	1. First Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *arrives a day late for McHanzo Week with a Venti Chai Latte and one for you too*  
> I hope you enjoy this, I really liked writing it. <3

The first time they were alone together, McCree realized that Hanzo wasn't nearly as cold or aloof as he'd first assumed.

They were on assignment, standing in the dark of a little antique store in the early hours of the morning when McCree realized they were alone. They hadn't been alone before. Being constantly surrounded by twenty one or so other people, omnics, a gorilla and a couple of dead folks didn't allow for a lot of privacy when you lived in fairly small quarters. But they were out of Gibraltar now. Out in the wide world with just each other standing in the sad, dark, smashed remains of an antique shop now.

"Hell of a mess," McCree remarked, looking around at shards of fine china, splintered pieces of beautifully carved woodwork, overturned furniture and smashed in pictures.

Hanzo didn't reply, but straightened a lamp shade in a disconsolate sort of way, and began picking his way through the mess.

The owners had been a couple unfortunate enough to draw the eye of those who "recruit" for Talon. They were safe with Winston, Tracer, Lucio and Zenyatta now, on their way to the closest Watchpoint where they could be protected. At least until Winston could figure out what had made them so attractive to the mercenary organization. McCree and Hanzo had been left to guard the place against any further interest by Talon, though McCree had seen the first group go down like a sack of shit and doubted if any more would show.

A light flickered up, warm and yellow, and McCree looked around to see Hanzo replacing the glass shroud around a oil lamp.

"Nice," McCree murmured. The shop looked, if possible, sadder by one flickering light. A huge, beautiful mirror on one wall had three bullet holes punched through it, shattering the glass into a web of dark lines and disconcertingly angled reflections. A cabinet with a glass cover had been smashed in, the blocky old jewelry and wind up pocket watches inside lying like dead things over broken glass and wood.

"Damn shame," McCree said, speaking idly and mostly for his own benefit. Hanzo had been quiet since he'd arrived at the Watchpoint, and McCree wasn't expecting a great deal of company now. Of all the folks at Watchpoint, McCree had sadly accepted the reality that he probably had the least that might appeal to their archer.

Something caught his eye, and McCree stooped, frowning as he picked up an shoebox, half kicked in and spilling white cards over the uneven floor. Something about the edges of one card, cut in a careful, almost lacy wave, reminded him of something.

"Yes, a shame."

McCree looked up, the shoebox in one hand, a couple cards he'd scooped off the floor in the other. Hanzo was looking at a glass bottle with an exquisitely modeled ship inside. The glass had been shattered by a line of rifle fire, which had also destroyed a couple of first editions on the shelf beside it.

"Always wondered how they got those boats inside the bottles," McCree took a step over, and cocked his head at the ship in a bottle. One of its mast had taken the rifle shot, and the ship with its careful, thread fine rigging, was in disarray around it.

"They built them flat and then lever the masts up once they're inside," Hanzo replied, then huffed, "Everything here was one of the last of it's kind."

"Like you."

McCree realized he'd said that outloud, and could have bitten his tongue off.

"And you," Hanzo said promptly, barely forestalling McCree's intentional self mutilation.

"I'm sorr... What?" McCree changed conversational tacks and blinked.

Hanzo turned to look at McCree, and the steady, unblinking attention felt sharp enough to run McCree through. The flickering golden light from the lamp lit half of Hanzo's face, and left the other half in shadow. His eyes, steady and unblinking, glowed in the low light.

First time McCree had felt Hanzo's attention like a physical weight he could revolve around. First time he'd really noticed his brown eyes held flecks of gold. 

McCree realized he'd stopped breathing, shut his mouth and forced himself to take a breath. Hanzo was speaking, probably eloquently, and McCree hadn't heard a word.

"Wait, missed that," McCree said, blundering blindly into the flow of words.

Hanzo scowled briefly at him, took a breath and started talking again, slower this time. "Everything here, it's value doesn't lie in itself, but in the continuing steward-hood of care. Something that was well loved and well kept because it was valuable simply by existing. Because of it’s value to someone. Something that survived from a different age."

McCree thought of Satya making hard constructs out of light and dance. Thought of Hana calling a mech from the sky with a touch of a button. Thought of Angela Ziegler raising the very dead. Thought of Hanzo's bow, the arrows; Hanzo made the arrows himself. Thought of his own gun, a design unchanged for two hundred years and more.

"We're relics," McCree said, and again, wished he didn't have the gift of speech. Something about Hanzo standing close to him made him incapable of saying anything worth hearing.

Hanzo snorted, a little smile, brief and genuine tipping the edges of his eyes up. McCree's mouth opened slightly again.

"Not relics, yet. Our value doesn't just lie in existing," Hanzo said, "But our actions."

"Actions, sure," McCree said, studying Hanzo's face in the low golden light of the lamp.

"And what we leave behind," Hanzo's gaze dropped to McCree's hands, "Like them."

"Them? Oh these..." McCree looked down at the shoebox and the handful of cards he'd scooped off the floor. The shoe box lid was cut in such a way half could be folded back. The inside read  _ Buy 'em, Frame 'em, Lie about 'em. $25 each _ .

Hanzo pulled a few cards from McCree's hands and turned them over. Black and white pictures, posed portraits and stiffly arranged familles. A streaky picture of a boy and a girl in their sunday best. A teenager with a parrot perched on one hand.

"Oh," McCree said stupidly. Wavy edges to some of the cards, because pictures had been treasures in those days, and the curved edges served as a decoration and a buffer to being dropped or handled roughly. He tucked the box under one arm and pulled another few out to look over. A man and woman standing arm in arm before a team of slightly blurred horses. A girl and an apparently prize winning Guinea Pig (third prize, junior division, Pebblebrook Shorthorns). A group of little girls and boys outside a church, each holding a copy of a book McCree was willing to bet money was Pilgrim's Progress. A group of slightly smudgy, fidgeting miners with a single woman in the foreground, her image clear as a bell.Two men in plus-fours with sticks over their arm posing on the edge of a cliff with a mountain range behind them. The solemnity and ludicrous formal posturing of the men looked hilarious with the wild and untouched beauty behind them.

They went through them all, each picture, passing them back and forth and laying out their favorites on sturdy, apparently bomb proof table from about the age of the Tudors. Kids and proud parents, lovers on their weddings days, families and pets and grinning workers in forests and mines and in factories. Their faces looked up out of their pictures, patient and silent with their owners long turned to dust and ash and faded from memory.

"These are relics," Hanzo murmured. "History and stewardship and a shared life, passion and drive."

"Memories," McCree said. "We ain't just memories. That's what you're getting at?"

"Yes, we're here, and real, tasked with protecting what's come before us. It's a trust."

McCree thought of Genji from before he'd gone to the omnics. Thought of his snarling, furious attack on his own family one late night, of Genji's rage that his brother had chosen a legacy they had no part of yet. Hanzo had protected the family honor and expectations; their line. But only at first.

"You feeling homesick?" McCree asked. He never would have dared ask if they weren't here, surrounded by the broken remains of treasures from the long dead and perfectly alone. 

"No. Not for years," Hanzo shifted the pictures, looking at one of two boys in sailor suits. They were both looking at the camera with the universal look of suffering children doing as they were told only under dire protest. Even if what they were told was to stand still for minutes in the hot sun wearing a ridiculous outfit holding hands with your brother like you didn't want to throw him into a mud puddle. So little of human nature changed over the years.

"I am," McCree admitted softly.

Hanzo looked up at him as though startled. Like whatever assumptions he'd made about McCree didn't fit with that quietly spoken confession. McCree hadn't intended to say anything. Hanzo's influence on him again, McCree’s flat inability to say anything useful.

"I am..." Hanzo paused, looked back to the pictures then scowled as he looked for the words, "Homesick for what I thought home was."

"Ah, yeah that's a tough one," McCree nodded. Of all the things his home had been, they'd been real, and he'd been brought up to face them. But not everyone was.

They stood side by side, looking down at the pictures while the long dead gazing back up at them. Or else, looking down at the faces of people gazing at their new husband or wife, or at their dog or best friend or their garden or a book. Whatever had filled their lives up with life and warmth and humor and joy at that second of that day in that place so long ago and so far away.

"You think pictures of us'll come up on one of these boxes? In a hundred years?" McCree asked idly.

"Your wanted poster might," Hanzo offered.

"Shoot you could be right. Hope it's the one with the higher bounty."

Hanzo gave another little snort that wasn't quite a laugh. More like a breath to stop himself from laughing.

"Hanzo," McCree said slowly, trying the name out as he said it. He hadn't had much call, or the nerve, to address Hanzo by name before now. It felt good on his tongue. "Don't think it's my place to say but, I was a wild, homeless stray when I got taken in here. Overwatch became more than a home to me, became a family and a calling. Don't know if you're looking for any of those, but if you are, you could be in a worse place, that's all."

They stood in silence after that, soft and easy and companionable while the oil lamp burned soft and golden. Their shoulders were touching and they kept sorting gently through the pictures, wondering about the stories and the lives that went with them. The families and friends and loved ones who had asked for the picture to be taken. These little black and white cards would have been treasured, once.

"Thank you," Hanzo said, so quietly McCree almost didn't hear him.

"Sure thing," McCree replied just as softly.

Hanzo shifted his weight slightly, just barely bringing his shoulder a little more firmly against McCree's. McCree caught himself smiling, and leaned gently into the touch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, this entire week is going to be a wild blast! I hope you enjoyed this, I love these two and I'm a massive sap for them finding out that they're home when they're together.  
> Chapters one and two were written this very evening, so they are not beta'd and will almost certainly have grammar and spelling mistakes, for which I apologize. I'll clean them up as I find them! Thank you for your patience!  
> I'm trying to post everyday this week, but as I'll be scrambling home for Christmas, so I may be posting late or early. More details as events warrant!


	2. Domestic Life

Living with McCree wasn't as bad as Hanzo had been dreading. It wasn’t, in fact, bad at all. 

Hanzo was solitary by practice and nature. He had been trained to turn inward, to withdraw, to keep himself apart. Able to judge situations objectively, instead of engaging his own feelings in them.

Living with McCree would be, would have to be, difficult. McCree had a way of easing everyone's defences down. A way of making personal space subjective. A way of making Hanzo want to engage. A way of making Hanzo turn inward not out of practice, indifference or uncertainty, but because he had no idea how to deal with him.

McCree however, turned out to be a surprisingly good roommate. Which was just as well considering their living space was far from ideal.

"I don't know how long you'll have to be there," Winston said apologetically. "It might be for nothing. But if we need you to go undercover, you're already in place to undertake the mission."

McCree had nodded amiably. "I've slept in worse places."

Hanzo had as well if it came to that. He wondered if that was why Winston had asked them to take the little apartment up. Two wanderers who could rough it when they had to.

Their apartment was narrow, squeezed in between larger, older buildings, in a city where every scrap of land held inestimable real estate value. Buildings had been built on the roofs of older buildings. The abandoned subway lines and service tunnels had been converted to living quarters. By the standards of the city, they were living in a palace.

It was roughly 700 square feet. 

Someone years ago had seen a low ceilinged loft appropriate for storage and nothing else, and knocked out southern wall and raised the roof and put in a half floor. Now a tiny nook of an eating area, kitchen, couch and a couple of over stuffed book cases made up the main floor, and a ladder led up to a square half the size of their first floor with a bed at either side, and a bookshelf dividing the two halves. The roof sloped steeply over them, hardly four feet above the the floor at their headboards and over twenty feet tall at other end. High windows on the long wall faced south and filled the room with constant hot, bright sunshine.

McCree and Hanzo had been living there for less than a week before the first plant arrived.

Hanzo scowled at it. It was a floppy ivy of some sort, with dark green, six fingered leaves. McCree looked sheepish. Hanzo pointed out that 700 square feet was hardly enough floor space for the two of them. McCree agreed with easy grace, but pointed out that as far as things went, 12,000  _ cubic  _ feet was more than enough for a plant or two.

Hanzo opened his mouth, shut it again, and waited for McCree to go on.

"Just wait," McCree grinned, "If you don't take to it, I'll turn it loose."

McCree bolted ladders up their windowless east and west walls, and put shelves beside them, one every few rungs all the way up the wall. The ivy sat alone on one shelf on the west wall, in the hot, near constant sunshine and was doted on daily by McCree. It exploded into a shaggy, long-reaching, glorious canopy in a few weeks.

Long before that, Hanzo had agreed with McCree that 12,000 cubic feet was enough for the three of them.

Shortly after that possibly foolish agreement, the second plant arrived. And then the third. Hanzo realized after the seventh arrived, and the ivy was flourishing and climbing through the air on a net McCree had rigged up for it, that he should have seen this coming. 

McCree asked him, a little sheepishly a few weeks into their sojourn at the apartment, if the plants were too much. Which was a question Hanzo had been asking himself with increasing confusion, because they  _ were _ . They were wild and untrimmed and scruffy and sought the light with unabashed eagerness. They were nothing, at all, like the plants he'd kept in his youth. They were nothing like the gardens he knew from his home.

Their tiny, white, narrow apartment was turning into a jungle. The light came in shadowed and dappled on the floor now and turned the apartment cool and fresh in the evenings. The high, hard walls didn't echo anymore. Lying in bed, he was eye level with the canopy that was growing, and could watch the sunrise over the city skyline through the leaves.

"Keep them," Hanzo said in answer to McCree's question. His roommate looked a little startled. "And get more, if you want them."

McCree broke into a grin, wide and genuine and Hanzo's first thought was that if McCree grinned like that more often, he could have all the plants he could care for.

The next day, he woke to find a little plant on his bedside table. A tiny thing with pale green round leaves and startlingly white flowers. Hanzo kept it on his headboard where it overflowed the edges of it's pot, and pale green leaves and star bright white flowers filled the space above where he slept.

They were still active in Overwatch, still went on missions and were in training. Winston had wrangled some agreement with a local peacekeeping group and two of Athena's pods had been installed and hooked up to her network in their office building. Hanzo and McCree went their daily for their hours in the training simulator. Hours from Watchpoint Gibraltar and the others, but easily able to keep practicing their Deliveries and King of the Hill matches on Kings Row and in Nepal with the others. The timezone was their only inconvenience. 

They weren't being called upon to go under cover yet, and Winston was still apologetically telling them they'd have to stay in their apartment a little longer, but Hanzo found he could say he didn't mind with more and more genuine feeling there.

He liked living with McCree. In their jungle treehouse squished in between two other buildings like a secret. Where the southern windows let hot, bright sunshine in for McCree's garden to soak up.

They took turns cooking at first, McCree was a good cook by long slap-dash, practiced necessity and Hanzo was a good cook from rote. He insisted on going shopping for the right food on the days he was responsible for, unyielding in his hunt for specific ingredients until he had every component he needed. McCree used what he had on hand, and bought what was good value. Hanzo had never appreciated food that didn't come from a recipe or trial and error perfection until McCree cooked for him. McCree could make anything taste good. 

Eventually though, and somewhat inevitably, they began cooking together. Hanzo shopping for food he wanted and McCree sourcing creative sides and solutions to fill gaps in the recipe no hunting by Hanzo could find. At first they sat at the table in the dining nook, clearing their weapons and research and maps and language guides aside to make room for their place settings. Then they gave up on the table and sat on the couch, discussing their training or the upcoming mission, or the city they didn’t really have time to explore. By the time McCree had 16 plants flourishing on their shelves at their glorious southern windows, Hanzo and McCree sat together on the floor, eating off the little low table and sharing a big plate since they both hated dishes.

The storms came in the fall, and the long windows became a triptych of lightning and wind and violent, unspeakable fury that they had no part of. They sat on the floor of their little common area, side by side tending to their weapons, and sharing apple pie because apparently McCree unabashedly celebrated Thanksgiving from the second Monday in October to the fourth Thursday in November. Hanzo didn’t mind, he watching the storm safe under their canopy.

McCree managed to wheedle leave out of Winston, somehow, Hanzo didn't ask what was said. But during the fall while the temperature dropped to something approaching bearable, McCree and Hanzo took to the city on the days it didn't storm. They explored the old quarter and the stone walls and bridges, climbed the towers and walked together down narrow streets where the houses grew up on either side until they almost closed in above them. They discovered, entirely by accident, that there was a canal in the city, something so ancient it was used just as regularly and without any more ceremony than any other thoroughfare. They walked the canal from the coast to the river one day, through the most ancient parts of the city, and talked for days together about all the things they'd seen and realized.

They had been there for almost four months when Winston called them. They were attempting their fortieth pie together, a strawberry-rhubarb because apparently McCree could source frozen fruit on the black market when he wanted rhubarb in the early winter. Hanzo didn't question McCree's dubious contacts anymore. They never failed him, were cheaper than shipping and were amenable to smuggling Hanzo whatever he thought to request. The call came outside of their simulated training, at their apartment, and at night, which was why both of them stiffened and glanced at each other. This was either a call to a mission, or something worse.

They stood over the comm, McCree frowning and wiping his floury hands on a tea towel while he sucked on a frozen strawberry, Hanzo feeling himself turn in, turn cold, turn away. Be objective, he heard his teachers tell him, still just as stern from thirty years ago. Keep your emotions clear, where they can't harm you.

"Hello," McCree answered the comm after it was clear Hanzo wasn't going to.

Winston's image popped up in it's hologram above the comm. "Hi there. Hanzo there too?"

"I'm here," Hanzo grunted. He felt surly and defensive for the first time in a long time, and knew it was childish of him. That realization only made him cross his arms and scowl at the hologram. He caught McCree watching him with a fond little smirk and scowled back.

"Good, ok, well, it's been four months since I thought we'd have a mission coming up over there. I'm pulling you two out." Winston said.

Hanzo shut his eyes. 

It would still be daytime in Gibraltar. Probably cool and windy in the early winter. The island fortress crowded with the other agents, the daily duties, the schedule and the missions and all the things that made living inside himself so easy.

"You're giving up?" McCree said lightly.

"It's not... I'm not... You've just had to live... I know it's hard on you to be in the city away from the action," Winston managed. “And through the summer.”

For a gorilla that could easily toss Hanzo around like a toy, or maybe because of that, Winston was surprisingly diffident when it came to giving orders. 

Hanzo wondered how the hell they were going to take the canopy with them. Or if McCree's plants would die here, where they'd be abandoned.

"Winston, it's no hardship, and summer’s over. Tell me pal, you still want this undercover mission to go down, whenever it goes down?" McCree's voice was still light, the casual, sing-song pace of a man working his way around to a topic.

"Well... Yes, but it's not really fair to you guys to... What I had in mind, the undercover thing, I know you guys are in place but it just might not come up," Winston huffed out a sigh. "I don't want to just leave you there if you're not..."

"Now hold on," McCree said amiably interrupting Winston without apology, "Don't we get a say in this?"

Hanzo opened his eyes. McCree was still watching him, but their gazes met and McCree looked away.

"Uhh," Winston's eloquence broke the silence that fell. "Of course? I thought you'd want to get back here, I know your place is small and the city's not what you're used to."

"Well if I get a say, I'm stayin," McCree said with a shrug.

Hanzo huffed out a sigh, he felt his shoulders drop like the tension in them had been cut.

"Oh," Winston's surprise was evident. There was a pause and Hanzo knew he was scratching his head. "You don't have to, Hanzo? You can come back if you like, I'll send someone over to take your..."

"No," Hanzo snapped, his outburst surprising all of them. "No need," He followed up, staring at Winston's hologram and not at McCree's face. Certainly not at his growing smile. "I'm staying."

"Oh," Winston paused then went on, sounding much more cheerful, "That's great. I'll let you know if I can put together a mission. Oh this is a relief, I've been thinking you guys felt abandoned out there."

"Not feeling abandoned at all buddy," McCree said, he was grinning now, beaming at Hanzo. "We're all good here."

Hanzo grunted his agreement, and Winston happily asked them to keep the schedule they had been sticking to and to let him know if they did want to come back at anytime.

"Sure, sure," McCree said airly. "Say hey to everyone. Tell Dva she was a beast in practice today, blocking my Dead Eye."

"Sure thing," Winston cheerfully wished them goodnight and hung up.

"Well," McCree said slowly, it was almost a drawl. He was grinning wide, still looking at Hanzo with unabashed delight. "Seems we're stuck here a little longer."

"Eventually you'll run out of cubic feet for plants," Hanzo replied, fighting to keep his expression neutral. It was hard around McCree, his good humor was infectious and Hanzo was catching it more and more these days.

"Sure," McCree agreed, "Eventually."

His lips were strawberry red and Hanzo kept his gaze carefully on McCree's eyes. "Then let's finish."

McCree nodded, and they went back to their pie making, their eager discussion about where to explore in the city next, their ongoing, highly enjoyable argument about whether to prune the suckers on the plants, whether they should attempt a curry for their next meal. They didn't mention the near miss they'd almost suffered. They didn't mention that they were both giddy not to be packing right now.

They shared strawberry rhubarb pie at midnight, watching the last of the fall storms lash out it's lightning and rain. The lights of the city below them made a orange glow in the rain, enough that they didn't need lights in their apartment. They just sat in the blessedly cool, quiet dimness, side by side on the floor before the windows under their canopy, watching the lightning and enjoying smuggled strawberry-rhubarb.

Hanzo shut his eyes with a contented sigh, empty plate on his lap and the taste of summer in his mouth.

"Woah now," McCree said. Even startled his voice was quiet right now. His fork rattled on his plate.

Hanzo opened his eyes and gave a short, sharp little breath of surprise. He turned, already knowing, already seeing their glow, and found the dragons where he expected them. McCree was sitting frozen, halfway to stand up or to touch them, Hanzo couldn't tell. The dragons were there, small and blue with their fur and whiskers moving slowly in a breeze Hanzo couldn't feel.

They were happily clambering over McCree's chest and back without a shred of hesitation.

"Hanzo," McCree said very quietly, keeping very still. "What's all this?"

"The dragons," Hanzo replied, he couldn't take his eyes off them. They had been his almost constant companions when he was a child. Their presence was frowned upon by his teachers who thought their taking a physical form reflected badly on Hanzo, some lack of discipline on his part.

"Your dragons," McCree said. One of them butted it's head against McCree's jaw and happily began rubbing it's face against his beard over and over. The force of it was pushing McCree's head back.  "This happen often?"

"No," Hanzo murmured. He'd only seen them a handful of times in the last few years. They appeared less and less as he grew up, and after Genji died, he thought they'd abandoned him altogether. The night he broke his bond with his clan and left was the first time they'd shown themselves to him since that terrible day.

"So," McCree raised a hand, paused, then carefully touched the dragon headbutting his beard with his right hand. It immediately headbutted his palm, and crawled it's long body up across his chest, flicking it's tail around McCree's neck. "This isn't normal, is it."

"No," Hanzo held one hand out to the second dragon. It had always been more remote, or maybe just shy. It shut its eyes and nosed up into his hand when he rubbed it's head. "Not normal."

"Huh," McCree said. "You know, they're terrifying in battle."

"Yes, I know," Hanzo knew extremely well how terrifying the Dragons of the Shimada could be.

"Cute as hell right now though," McCree went on conversationally. He had been sitting leaning back, almost in a half sit up, and slowly sat forward again. Both dragons twined around his neck and draped themselves over his shoulders.

"They like you," Hanzo said, and wish he hadn't.

"Well I'll be," McCree murmured. He was cradling the head of one dragon in his right hand and scratching the bearded chin of the other with his left. They both churred in contentment and Hanzo shook his head at them.

"Shameless," He chided softly, and without much feeling. He watched as one dragon butted it's head against McCree's jaw again, rubbing it's forehead against his beard before sliding around his neck and under his hair.

McCree snorted, "They're sweet Hanzo, I like 'em." McCree stroked both long bodies, smiling at the stranger ethereal beasts that had appeared apparently to do no more then rub against McCree’s beard and draped around him like a couple of heavy, obnoxious boas.

It occurred to Hanzo that McCree must have had pets before, cats or dogs, which must have adored him.

The storm flashed outside and all four of them looked up and out the windows.

"I'm glad," Hanzo said quietly, as the rain began beating down the windows, "That we're staying."

McCree nodded, then stopped when it jostled the dragon who was busily self grooming on his beard. "Me too."

They sat together until the small hours, sitting side by side and watching the last storm of autumn. McCree idly pet the dragons and chirped little endearments and compliments to them. The dragons slung their long bodies over and around him and went to sleep with careless bliss. Hanzo realized, watching the storm from the safety of their jungle, tasting strawberry rhubarb on his lips and listening to McCree's low murmur, he completely understood why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter about Domestic Life with pie and explorations and noodle dragons. I love these boys so much and i swear I do have angsty, drama filled fics with them but for now sap and fluff is all I have to give you.   
> This work was written a few hours ago, so there are most certainly grammar and spelling mistakes which are terribly embarrassing and I'm so sorry about them. I'll clean them up as I go along, thank you for your patience!  
> Tomorrow is AU day, I'm really excited for it!


	3. Alternate Universe: Monster Hunter/Fairy Tale

The gunslinger came over the mountain at midday. It was hard going without a trail to follow, and he was tired, and he left blood on the stones as he ran.

He had only been injured once, instead of killed outright, having left a few minutes before the order for his execution had been formerly released and leaving the guards little time to react as he departed. The gunslinger was a practiced master at getting out of town fast. He'd even managed to get his payment on his way out the door this time, if only because his grateful sponsor had held it out to him at arm's length as he sprinted past them on his way to the stables. He'd left the horse at the foot of the mountain when he began scrambling up through the trees towards the summit. It would be with the soldiers now.

The exceptionally well trained, highly motivated soldiers who would kill him on sight.

He paused at the top of the mountain, swaying with exhaustion, clutching his side and blinking to try to clear the dizzy image of rocks and snow pitching around him. Eventually, his vision cleared and his balance returned, and he stood panting the thin air, looking down into the valley, and wiped blood and sweat off his face and shook his hair out of his eyes.

It was a nice little valley, a bowl of snow and stone and pine forests between four mountaintops with a starkly beautiful glacial lake shining in it's centre.

And it was empty.

The gunslinger cursed.

The folks in the towns nearby knew that no one ever came here, that this valley was dangerous, cursed, that animals avoided it, no birds would fly overhead. They knew that those who came through here never, ever returned. The gunslinger knew that too. He'd done a fair share of helping those rumors germinate in the minds of the surrounding area.

He left blood on the last of the snow at the crest of the mountain, and began making his way down the rock and lichen into the trees.

It was midafternoon when he dropped to his knees beside the lake. It was cool, and still, and the tall pines stood tall and silent behind him. The water was flat as a mirror,  reflecting the sky, the peaks of the mountains, and the crowns of trees with startling beauty. The gunslinger tugged his bloody glove off, slipped his hand into the glacial water, and drank until his belly was full and his teeth ached from the cold.

When he looked up next, he looked straight up into the eyes of a dragon.

It stood on the glassy surface of the lake, perfectly silent, a long, arching blue scaled body, a pair of elegantly turned horns and four short, clawed feet. The downy looking fur of its crest and mane and beard swayed softly, as though underwater. It's golden eyes looked calmly down at the gunslinger, close enough to touch.

"Hanzo," The gunslinger breathed. All the pain and tension and fear and desperation he’d been fighting to stay above dropped out of him at once.

The dragon tipped its face towards him, just in time to catch the gunslinger across his wide snout as he fell forwards.

"McCree," The dragon growled. "What did they do to you?"

"Put an execution order on my head. Can you believe it? Just for killing a vampire," McCree buried his free hand into the downy fur of Hanzo's mane. He nuzzled against the smooth, warm scales and could have sobbed with relief.

“Seems fair, the boy was somewhat popular," Hanzo gently eased McCree back, bullying and leading him letting McCree cling to his fur and horns until he lay back on the lakeside, shuddering with pain. He nosed McCree's hand aside, feeling the inevitable when McCree immediately took the opportunity to stoke his displaced hand under his chin, scratching into his beard. Hanzo ignored him, and snuffed at the broken shaft of the arrow that jutted from his side. 

"You're dying," Hanzo's snout was bloody when he came up.

"Sure am," McCree agreed drowsily. "Don't mind do you?"

"Only somewhat," Hanzo growled, his voice was deep in this form, and he was furious, McCree could tell.

"It's not their fault," McCree said softly, he tugged gently on Hanzo’s mane, “It’s not.”

"I'll take you to Lucio," Hanzo nuzzled McCree gently where he lay. "I’m sorry I wasn’t here. WhenI heard the cannons at the watch tower's signalling and I thought... I went looking for you."

"It's been a long day darlin," McCree's side felt heavy and cold. When he tried to move the muscles anywhere in his core they ignored him. "Just let me catch my breath."

"All that you have left of it," Hanzo growled at him, but didn't move as McCree stroked his hand over his head, pett back his mane and rubbing the tip of his bloody nose.

"Missed you," McCree murmured.

"You really must be near death," Hanzo replied dourly. "Hold on to me."

"I'll be fine. You're here ain't you? I've got nothing to worry about," McCree moved with a practiced effort that even being an inch from death couldn't stall. Hanzo ran his long body against McCree, and he managed to get both hands around Hanzo's horns as they passed him. With a grunt of pain and effort, McCree slipped into place behind Hanzo's head. Now all he had to do was hang on.

Then Hanzo was suddenly flying, whipping once around the lake before launching straight up towards the sky. McCree, breathless, voiceless and half dead, felt the wind tear through his hair and gazed down at the valley below them. The familiar bowl of land bordered with the high peaks of the mountains, and beyond them, the land stretching out towards twilight to the west, the east a rosy afternoon out towards the blue mountains beyond. Hanzo roared, bursting through a low, dove grey cloud and turned, McCree clinging to his back, his cheek pressed into the soft mane, looking out at the curving rim of the horizon and the clouds above and below them. He knew he was smiling like an idiot. This never, ever became anything less than wonderful and beautiful to McCree. Even when he was dying. 

Then Hanzo's long body arched and dove downward, plummeting back the way they'd come.

They crashed through the surface of the lake, and McCree held his breath even though he knew he would never have to while Hanzo was with him. There was no splash, no water, and the cold was a flash that passed as he flew with the dragon up, out of a vast pool in the centre of a wide courtyard. It was warm suddenly, blissfully warm, and McCree looked around, smiling and drunk with relief as he looked at stone walls and sunshine on cherry trees is rapturous full bloom. The pain didn't seem real anymore, just a remote thing that troubled him when Hanzo hadn’t been around.

"It's autumn," McCree murmured to the flowering trees.

Hanzo tipped his head, and gently spilled McCree out over a stone bench. "Not here," he replied, "Welcome home."

"Good to be home," McCree's head tipped sideways, looking at the pool, it's surface smooth as a mirror, reflecting the sky, the pink trees and high stone walls. "Do me a favor would you Hanzo? I think I left my hat on the lake side back there."

McCree felt himself smile again as the darkness eating at the corners of his vision rose up. He felt Hanzo's muzzle press against his chest, warm and huge and solid and gentle, and he dropped away into unconsciousness.

It was morning when he woke. He lay still for a second or two, taking a mental catalogue of the comfortable futon under him, the duvet, the familiar weight of the wool blanket he'd brought from home when he'd come here, years ago. His side was warm and whole, a little scar where the arrow had run him through. McCree sighed in relief, and opened his eyes, looking up at the dark beams of his bedroom ceiling above him. A few cherry blossoms drifted in, and he turned his head to find one of the walls of his room had been folded back, and was wide open onto the flowering cherry tree in the garden outside.

Home. McCree sank a little deeper into his futon and duvet. Warm and safe and home, where he belonged.

"Morning." 

McCree looked around, and Lucio grinned at him. 

"You managed to make an amazing disaster of your side, but you're all patched up now."

"Much obliged," McCree sat up gingerly, but there was no pain. When Lucio took care of him, there was never any pain. "That's mighty fine of you."

"No problem," Lucio smiled, "He was worried about you, never been bounced out of an assignment so fast in my life."

"Right," McCree blinked. His hat was sitting on top of a folded pile of his cleaned clothes. His armor was stacked neatly beside it. "Heard you were somewhere starting a revolution, how's that coming along."

"Pretty well, thanks for asking. And your vampire?"

"Dead."

"Nice."

"Turned out to be the crown prince."

"Bad luck," Lucio said promptly, "No wonder they did a number on you."

McCree looked up at Lucio again, "He didn't go back out did he? To where I..."

"No," Lucio shook his head, his smile gone a little sad. "No, he stayed after he got me. Not that he didn't want to go avenge you, that's a key distinction. He stayed here and spent most of last night hovering. You better talk to him."

"Yeah, sure thing," McCree picked his hat up and turned it over and over in his hands, "Guess I will."

Lucio nodded amiably, and jumped up, all in one go, his energy making McCree feel tired. Lucio would have been up all night playing and singing to heal him and could still move with the boundless energy of youth. 

"Thanks," McCree said again, "You're the best."

"Don't I know it," Lucio butted his fist affectionately against McCree's forehead before he left. "Take better care of yourself next time though, Hanzo wasn't the only one worried."

McCree didn't bother with his armor, just the soft, light clothes he wore under them, a privilege of living somewhere so safe. He ran a hand through his hair and pushed his hat into place, and went out to find Hanzo.

He found him in the main courtyard, wrapped around himself like a snake with his huge head poised over the pool staring down into the water. He looked around instantly when McCree whistled to him.

"Morning," McCree ambled up, smiling at his friend, watching his fur shift and move, graceful and weightless, and the scales shine in the sunlight. "Lucio's got me all patched up."

Hanzo nodded and uncoiled himself, shaking out his mane and stretching out to circle around McCree protectively. McCree didn't think Hanzo noticed he did it, and didn’t mind that he did. He smiled, and leaned back against Hanzo's smooth, curving flank.

"Timely save, Hanzo, much appreciated." McCree grinned up at the huge dragon's face above him.

Hanzo looked down at him and huffed out a sigh. "I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

McCree studied the graceful curve of his horns, and the smooth scales and the downy fur. He'd called this dragon's castle his home for a long time now, but he never grew tired of watching Hanzo. He was never not in complete awe of him. "I knew you'd come get me," McCree said after a moment. He reached up, and Hanzo obligingly lowered his head, and huffed again as McCree pet his mane down, running his fingers through the downy fur, and gently rubbing his wide chin. "Lucio said you stayed all night with him."

"With you,” Hanzo corrected, “I thought I'd been too late," he added quietly. He shut his eyes and leaned a little more heavily into McCree's hands. "When I saw you on the lake side, I thought this might be the time you didn't come home."

"I'll always come home," McCree said quietly. "I'll always come to wherever you are."

They stayed like that for a little while, Hanzo resting his head in McCree's hands, McCree leaning up against one arc of his body and murmuring reassurances.  _ I'm fine, no harm, you came, you got me, I knew you'd come for me, it's alright. I’m home. _

Finally, Hanzo barely nodded, and pulled back slightly to study him. “Alright, tell me then, I know you can hardly wait.” 

"Vampire didn't turn anyone else," McCree said with a flash of a grin at Hanzo. "King and Queen have two daughters who were away at the time. Prince sought out and tricked a vampire to change him, wanted the power. I spoke to the one who turned him, not a bad sort all told, they were the one who paid me to show up. They didn't realize the kid who begged to join the family was the crown prince and a goddamn murderer."

"You left the first vampire?" Hanzo tipped his huge head. "The sire?"

"Dame, yeah. She's lived over a hundred years without taking any lives. Working as a baker in the king's city for the last few months quite happily," McCree shrugged, "She just wants a quiet life. She's alright, told her to keep her head down for a while."

"You're lenient," Hanzo grunted.

"Says the dragon getting chin rubs from a monster hunter," McCree grinned. "A monster hunter who tried to kill him. repeatedly."

Hanzo tensed, and suddenly his form shifted and scattered and melted away, until McCree was standing before a man with black hair and a blue dragon tattoo.

"Well, hey there," McCree murmured. His pulse was fluttering in his throat and his face was was warm and he couldn't stop smiling. Hanzo’s second of many forms was his personal favorite.

Hanzo blinked up at McCree and scowled briefly, the irritation of the dragon, and that of his human form was identical, unchanged despite the wildly different faces. It annoyed Hanzo no end that McCree was taller then him like this. He liked being the size of a mountain around McCree.

"I wasn't lenient," Hanzo said, apparently insisting that point be clarified. He stepped in, already reaching up. "You proved to be a valuable ally."

"I'm not sure who was more surprised at that," McCree smiled, pulling his hat off because Hanzo's hands, warm and human and familiar, were on his shoulders, tugging him in and down and threading up into his hair.

"Me," Hanzo said bluntly, stepping up until they were chest to chest, and nuzzled his face into McCree's. "Absolutely, I was more surprised."

McCree laughed, his lips against Hanzo's mouth and his eyes shut and his face cupped in Hanzo's hands. "I'm glad it turned out this way," He whispered, and stroked one hand over Hanzo's cheek.

They kissed beside the pool of mirror-flat water, under the flowering cherry trees in the courtyard of the castle, standing close and holding on to one another.

"Probably not as surprised as I was, the first time you turned human," McCree said softly. He kissed Hanzo's cheek, just because he could, just because he could feel Hanzo's blush warm against his lips.

Hanzo smiled, his eyes still shut, leaning up and into McCree. "Yes, you had to sit down."

"For a couple reasons," McCree grinned, and pressed another kiss into Hanzo. "Spent a couple weeks getting to know a seventy foot long dragon who may or may not want to kill me. Then he turns human, takes my hands and kisses me until I can't breath. Can't blame a man for needing a minute after something like that happens."

Hanzo ran his hands through McCree's hair, stroking it off his face and studying him. McCree looked back with a smile, the two of them watching each other with familiar, quiet delight. McCree cradled Hanzo's waist in his hands as a few cherry blossoms drifted by, too early for most of them to start falling.

"You need a minute this time?" Hanzo said after a while.

"I'll need more than a minute with you," McCree smiled, and ducked his head as Hanzo leaned up to meet him. They stayed wrapped around each other, safe and warm at home, and kissed quietly and easy and familiar while the cherry blossoms fell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh I hope you all enjoy shojo manga kiss scenes as much as I do. _(:3」∠)_ Thank you so much for reading. This is actually a bit from a much bigger work that I have been picking at, so if you enjoyed it, there may be more coming!   
> Please check out the rest of the bounty of McHanzo week delights!! It's a party!!   
> Thanks again for reading, I hope you enjoyed and I'll be back tomorrow with Day 4: Role Reversal


	4. Role Reversal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Shows up several weeks late to McHanzo week with a tray of Starbucks* Hello again.  
> I wrote this during McHanzo week, but wasn't able to post it at the time for a few reasons. Looking back on it, I still really liked it, so I'm tenderly sliding it into the pile for your consideration and amusement.  
> Thank you for you patience, I hope you enjoy. <3

The message was a fairly simple one - _Jesse McCree, come at 0200 to talk_ \- but it was more than enough to kill seven people, destroy a heritage property and turn Hanzo into a thief. It almost turned McCree into a coward.

"Talk," McCree said, turning the card over and looking at a picture of the city's three hundred year old citadel on its hill above the downtown. "Talk," He said again, a little more slowly.

From his seat beside McCree, Hanzo looked at the glossy card. There was a _Welcome to Your History!_ banner across the bottom. McCree was smiling at it with a sardonic twist to his mouth.

"You know who wants to talk to you?" Ana was watching at him from over the rim of her tea cup.

McCree met the golden one-eyed gaze square on, "Deadlock." He shrugged, and dropped the postcard on the table, sitting back. "They're still cherishing dreams of killing me."

Ana frowned, and replaced the tea cup in its saucer. Hanzo picked the card up and studied the writing on the back, blocky capital letters written fast with a sharpie. He glanced up at Pharah who was scowling almost as darkly as her mother.  

The silence stretched on, and Hanzo forgot his meal, forgot his drink, forgot the lovely hotel restaurant surroundings and watched McCree's hands. McCree was one of nature's habitually occupied people. He wasn’t a fidgeter, and he knew how to be still, but his right hand always seemed drawn to the warmth of coffee mugs, the texture of paper and fabric or metal. His fingertips would trace the whorl of the grain in wood or the pattern in cloth, the score marks carved into anything his hands were nearby.

His hands were perfectly still on the table.

"I don't show, they'll come looking for me," McCree remarked quietly. He wasn't eating either.

"Better they come to us," Ana said firmly, she set cup and saucer down with a decisive tinkle of fine china. With the way she moved and spoke, the cup should have thundered when she set it down.

Hanzo completely agreed with her. He'd already explored the old citadel, built when warfare was an inevitability and winning meant survival. He’d seen it from the perspective of a man trained to be a war lord, and approved. Everything was planned to give the defenders every natural advantage. The entryways that funneled attackers into crossfire kill-boxes. The abundant and varied cover in the citadel, while attackers had bare grassy hillsides and the occasional mole hill. The ideal vantage point of being on a hill and on top of a fortified wall that allowed complete and easy surveillance all the way down to the harbour and out to the ocean. A quiet, reasonable talk would be almost impossible in the dark fortress that echoed with every footstep, but killing would come easily.

"They come looking, they won't just come for me Ana," McCree said, his voice was soft as he glanced around the busy restaurant.

Ana scowled. The hotel was busy, and the restaurant was packed. It was the tail end of the tourist season with a long anticipated hockey game coming up and a few conferences to boot. The universities were beginning their fall semester and students and anxious/proud parents were everywhere. With the streets crowded with humans and a few omnics, families and business people and couples on dates, Hanzo didn't like the odds any of them would have if the Deadlock Gang came looking for McCree.

"So we all go," Pharah shrugged, "Show up early, watch over him."

"No," Ana said curtly. "We are not making a war in this city."

"If Deadlock's here we're already in a war. We just don't know it. Might do well to go in tonight Ana, clean a few of them up. Shake a few more loose." McCree suggested. He never wheedled, but he could lay words out to make it easy to agree with him.

Hanzo frowned. McCree wanted to go.

"We have our own objective here. McCree, ignore it," Ana shook her head. "Leave Deadlock to the police. We will simply report this."

"Sure," McCree said, he nodded in easy assent, "I'll stay put."

McCree was an exceptionally good liar. Hanzo had to give him that, he only had one tell that Hanzo had noticed, and only managed to notice by watching McCree much more than anyone he'd ever known.

"Good," Ana said with a decisive little nod. "Pharah, you know the police in this town, you reach out to them, put them in touch."

Ana went on and Hanzo stopped listening. His heart was beating too fast and the glossy picture of the citadel was face up on the table in front of him. He was watching McCree.

McCree only went still, really still, for two reasons: to lie and to shoot. He wasn't staying put. And he would go to the citadel alone.

It was almost midnight when Hanzo broke into Ana Amari's room. He moved quietly, avoided the cameras with easy grace, and left before she returned from her evening's talk with her daughter. It wasn't really stealing, he insisted to his worn-down and beleaguered voice of conscious. Borrowing without permission for the good of the mission was hardly a court martial offence. Ana would disagree but Hanzo planned on being able to offer the ends to justify the means.

It was just before 1am when Hanzo knocked on the door to McCree's room.

McCree answered in a ratty pair of sweatpants and a faded grey Overwatch Academy tee-shirt that was at least a decade old and two sizes too small. It was so worn Hanzo could see through it.

Hanzo's mouth abruptly, and inconveniently, went dry.

"Hanzo, what's wrong?"

He had freckles on his shoulders. There was a scar on McCree's chest, a jagged line that his chest hair hadn't grown back over. The edge of his shirt ended at least two inches from the waistband of his sweatpants and his stomach was soft and thick with muscle. His sweatpants were old and baggy and hung too low, the hair on his chest and belly narrowed into a dark trail below his navel.

"Ah, Hanzo?" McCree shifted in the door, his toes curled and turned in on the carpet.

"Deadlock," Hanzo shut his eyes, made an effort, and locked his attention on McCree's face when he looked at him again. His hair was damp from a shower, and he was looking at Hanzo with a blush and mild expression of concern and apprehension. "You lied to Ana."

McCree's expression went from concerned to amiable. "Better come in if you're not going to keep your voice down."

Amable didn't mean much, Hanzo reflected as he eased past McCree, trying not to notice how the man seemed to radiate heat like a brasier. Amiable just meant McCree was stalling for time until he could think of something to say to turn the situation back to his advantage. McCree had an excellent store of amiable things to say for times when he’d been challenged.

"Why'd you think I lied?" McCree asked. He shut the door and went to tuck his thumbs into his pockets, realized he was wearing sweatpants, and crossed his arms instead.

"You have a tell," Hanzo retorted shortly.

"Hell Hanzo, you would make a poker game fun," McCree tipped his head and leveled a charming smile at him.

"You lied," Hanzo replied. He was already charmed and grumpy about it and refused to get off topic. He was standing in McCree's hotel suite, surrounded by the well ordered chaos of a man who knew _just_ where he'd put everything. His bed had been moved to sit under the wide open window and had a few extra pillows arranged in a comfortable looking nest. There was an open book on the bedside table and a cup of coffee beside it. McCree was standing wearing sweatpants and a gossamer thin shirt and smile and Hanzo was struggling to stay on topic let alone keep his thoughts in order. He was going to stay on topic regardless of how charming a smile McCree aimed at him.

"I sure did," McCree said softly.

He hadn't expected an admittance, and Hanzo blinked, his attention dragged back to McCree's face with a jerk. McCree's smile twitched a little wider.

"You said you know when I'm lying," he shrugged. "So I guess I can't lie to you. I'm going up to the citadel. I know who wrote that card, I know that police won't do much to them. But I can."

"You're not going alone then," Hanzo shook his head. "You need..."

“Like hell I'm letting you get mixed up in this."

For the first time, McCree sounded angry, his words clipped, coming out almost in a snarl. Hanzo watched him, but the flash of real anger was gone again.

"It's my problem," McCree said after a beat, he shrugged, slow, easy movements that invited slow, easy conversation, slow, easy thoughts. McCree was good at controlling his environment. "My problem from before, long before I came to Overwatch. They're not playing around, and they've always been coming for me. I sure am not letting you take that chance."

Hanzo swallowed, and a flash of something shadowed McCree's practiced confidence. Fear maybe, determination.

"Or Ana, or Pharah," McCree went on. He'd gone still again, but Hanzo didn’t think he was lying. "Bastion or Zen. Anyone. It's my fault, my problem. You got a problem with that let's settle it now."

It was just after 1am that Hanzo shot McCree at almost point blank range.

McCree nearly got out of the way of it too. The man had the instincts and reflexes of a cat on his last life, and Hanzo didn't really have a backup plan if he missed.

The sleep dart he'd stolen from Ana dropped him though. McCree fell back with a breathless curse and Hanzo dropped the dart gun and was already grabbing everything he'd need by the time McCree hit the floor.

Six seconds wasn't a lot of time. It was enough for Hanzo to bundle everything he needed into the red serape, tie it closed and pull it over his back. It was enough time to stop, and stoop down beside McCree on his way to the window, touch McCree's cheek briefly and whisper "I'm sorry." It was barely enough time to jump over McCree's bed, grab the open window and throw himself out into the night.

"Hanzo!"

Six seconds was no goddamn time at all, Hanzo reflected, falling towards the quiet street below him and landing easily on the head of a lamppost. McCree was in the window above him, sounding half wild from fury. Hanzo dropped to the sidewalk, hitched the bundled serape a little more securely over his back and darted across the road, into the shadow between two buildings, and raced up the wall to the roof.

McCree was going to be furious, Hanzo thought with his heart pounding hot in his throat. But he'd have to deal with Ana first, who was going to discover her sleep gun missing in a minute or two when she came back to her room. And then McCree was going to have a hell of a time explaining where Hanzo was. Ana would be able to keep him busy.

The hotel they were set up in was in the old quarter of town, and the close packed, low stone buildings were ideal for traveling unseen above the streets. He had the run of this entire quarter, from the harbor to citadel hill, and had to stop himself, panting slightly from his run, before he arrived too early.

This wasn't going to work. Hanzo knew that as he knelt on the roof of the closest building to the citadel and unwrapped the serape. He didn't know that this was exactly, besides being a stupid, impulsive attack brought on by anger that came straight from fear. He pulled the familiar hat out of the bundle of McCree's kit and held it in both hands. Stupid, he told himself, idly stroking the dark worn leather. Stupid.

The clothes were surprisingly comfortable. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but everything was soft and smooth, worn and broken in until it must have suited McCree to some exacting standard. Everything was just right for his body, his shape, the clothes as close as fitted armor. Hanzo was too short, McCree was three inches taller than him at least, but the belt and it's absurd buckle helped. The shirt fit well though, slightly too tight but the chest plate covered that. With a pang of real guilt, he slipped Peacekeeper into it's holster, pulled a pair of gloves on and swung the red serape around his shoulders. He pulled his hair out of it's ponytail and it was about the same length as McCree's like this, and no one would notice it was black instead of brown in the dark.

The clothes smelled like McCree, and brought him as irresistibly to mind as though he was here. Hanzo stood very still, breathing in the smell of clean leather and sage and smoke, and reminded himself that McCree was never going to forgive him. Which was fine. There was never any hope of anything anyway, camaraderie and the same easy, casual friendliness he offered to everyone was the best he could hope for. Could have hoped for. After tonight there wouldn't even be that, if he survived.

He had to walk the rest of the way, and was forced to use a fire escape to get off the roof. Hanzo sorely missed the mobility his outfit grated him, wearing these boots, he couldn't even climb. But the armor was reassuring, and the serape was warm over his shoulders. Hanzo liked the idea that wherever he'd gone, wherever he'd been, McCree had sought comfort and warmth like a cat. Hanzo hoped McCree had plenty of both now he was back with Overwatch. Hoped he'd have plenty of both in the future.

The citadel was mostly dark at this time of night, and it wasn't fenced, as people could use the trails over the hilltop to cross from downtown to the student housing. Hanzo made his way the stairs and paths, keeping his head tipped down whenever he came close to a light. He had no real idea where to go, but he knew where the best spot for an ambush was, and headed there. He kept his gate slow, walking like he'd watched McCree walk. Hanzo had watched McCree countless times from his vantage points in a thousand mock battles and through dozens of missions. Hanzo always looked out for McCree. He knew how McCree moved.

"Now hold on right there, Jesse."

Hanzo stopped, and tipped his head up just enough to look up. They were in the north-western gate, opening to the apex between two wings of the citadels eight pointed star. He was on a bare asphalt path over a smooth hillside with the high walls of the citadel looming up and out from either side of him. On the path before him, just under the bright lamppost, a woman in a duster and kepi cap was waiting for him.

"Glad to see you're not all coward Jesse, you brought my gun back to me?"

Hanzo paused, threw the last shreds of caution to the winds, and nodded.

"Alright, nice and slow, lets see it."

Very slowly, Hanzo held both hands up. Then, carefully, telegraphing his every move, he pulled Peacekeeper from it's holster with his thumb and forefinger, let it lie across his palm, and held it out towards her.

"Hell, I really didn't think you still had it. Or be dumb enough to bring it right back to me."

She'd taken a step forward, unconsciously maybe, staring down at the the gun in Hanzo's outstretched hand. Hanzo glanced up, heads were up over the walls on either side of him, lighting up as they leaned out from the shadows over the wall. Four on one side, two on the other, and a few lines of rifle stocks and pistols.

"Thought for sure you'd have had the sense to sell it," The woman was saying. "Less you bought it back just for me?"

She glanced up and Hanzo shook his head.

"Well," the woman grinned. He couldn't see her face, the light was behind her, but her teeth glinted in the shadows. She was walking towards him, closing the distance with one hand already reaching out. "Little disappointing Jesse, remember you being a little taller back in the day, little more life in you too. Guess someone finally taught you to shut you stupid damn mouth you goddamn son of..."

"Finally," Hanzo muttered, looking her full in the face at last. How did McCree have the patience for this?

The flashbang exploded in the woman's face and the froze with a little yelp of shock. Hanzo turned his hand, swung his arm up, and Peacekeeper slid into his hand as easily as he'd expected it to. He was alreading reaching to fan the hammer as the point of the muzzle came to bare on the woman's frozen face.

Six shots chattered out and Hanzo hit the ground hard in a roll before her body fell. There was a furious shriek on the walls above him, and two shots came down, thudding into the ground where he'd stood.

And now Hanzo was a fish in a barrel, armed with a gun that liked a mid-range target and a stun grenade that liked close range combat. The walls were high, and the people shooting down at him were shooting into a well lit flat area at a target dressed in red.

Hanzo cursed, snapped Peacekeeper's cylinder into place after reloading, looked up at the wall before him, aimed, and fired. A bark of surprise and one silhouette vanished. Shot again and another swore, and kept swearing. A long long of blood pattered down the wall and the ongoing curses became muffled.

The tops of the walls were deserted now and Hanzo had nothing to aim at. Nowhere to go but back down the hill, with a long easy field of vision and plenty of light on his back.

Well he'd killed two, hurt a third. And it was in the dead of night but there was exceptionally few guns in circulation in the city and so someone would have noticed the racket and called it in. Not that he had the luxury of time for police response. Perhaps before the police arrived to collect his remains, he could inconvenience the rest.

Hanzo backed down the hill, his gaze flicking from one wall to the other, waitin for someone to break the cover of the wall and try and get a shot in. He told McCree, he told him that he'd need help. He’d told him this would happen and now Hanzo was living it instead.

The warm serape and the soft, well worn clothes were incredibly comforting, even here, waiting for the last shot he would ever have to worry about to fell him.

A head and a rifle came up from one wall, and Hanzo was moving, lining up a shot, already pulling the trigger when two more on the other wall came up, rifles swinging towards him.

He'd known he was going to die by the sword. Known it was going to end in blood and pain and failure. He'd grown up by the sword, lived by it. You died by what you kept close when it was well honed violence.

At least he was going to die wrapped up warm and cozy and with McCree's kit on. It felt like McCree was here, Hanzo could smell him, and maybe it wouldn't feel like dying alone.

Peacekeeper cracked out one shot, and then two rifle shots spoke in quick succession above him. Hanzo flinched, but the pain didn't come, the hammer blow of a rifle shot never hit him. A miss, then or... Another head above the wall, calling out in confusion and anger and Hanzo snapped Peacekeeper up. A rifle spoke again, the short, sharp bark shatteringly loud from behind him, the noise bouncing off the citadel walls into his face. Hanzo watched the last head above the wall snap back and fall, and he lowered Peacekeeper and backed another step. Then turned and ran down the hill.

He'd told McCree he'd need help. Whoever came to this godforsaken citadel was going to need cover to get away.

There was a clock tower on the hillside, built between the citadel and the old quarter, and Hanzo made for that. Above him, a rifle cracked out four more shots, and Hanzo jumped the stairs up onto the tower's foundation, and hit the doors at a run. They crashed open at his shove and Hanzo skidded to a stop at the foot of a spiral stair case and something chimed sweetly at his feet.

Shell casings, seven of them. Above him, a rifle exploded and an eighth fell. Hanzo cast his head back, looking up the stairs past a still, lifeless body to where the darkness of the tower was broken by the open windows of the cupola above the clock faces. He squinted and found a figure crouched up there on the rafters with a line rifle, aiming out and up towards the citadel.

"I swear to god Hanzo if Ana doesn't kill you, I will," McCree called down to him.

"Counter productive," Hanzo called back. He heard the roar of some heavy car coming up the hill from the south and looked out the door carefully. A jeep was accelerating towards them up the hill.

An RPG launcher emerge from a roof, and a gunner climbed awkwardly after it.

"McCree, we have to leave, now."

"Damn, right." McCree yanked his rifle back in, dropped out of the rafters and clattered down the spiral staircase. Hanzo grabbed him, felt McCree's hands close around his side and they both dove out of the clock tower and jumped the steps off the foundation, and threw themselves and each other down at it's base for cover.

The clock tower exploded above them.

Hanzo pulled McCree down, pulling him under his body just as McCree apparently tried to do the same to him. For a moment, the roar and the dust and the shock of the explosion was overwhelming, a window to hell. Then the tower fell, straight towards the Jeep which made an admirable panic stop, and the entire night screamed with sirens.

McCree snorted, "Time to go."

"Yes," Hanzo half stood, was half dragged up by McCree as he was dragging McCree up. Together, they turned and booked it down the hill, away from the jeep half buried in the tower's remains, away from the bodies at the citadel and the questions that were going to be incredibly hard to answer. Away from the 200 year old rubble of the clock tower.

"Where did you get a rifle?" Hanzo hissed as they cleared the short drop from the hillside to the sidewalk and kept running.

"Dumb bastard in the tower had it. I figured they'd have that tower covered so went there first. Thought you have had a point about needing cover."

Hanzo just grunted. He didn't really feel the need to remind McCree how badly this would have gone if McCree had come alone. "Who was that woman and why did she want your gun?"

They scooted around a corner into a street packed with police, five fire trucks, two ambulances and an armored van with the national navy insignia on the side. Heavilly armed, uniformed and attentive were moving purposely towards them.

They stopped short. McCree instantly dropped his rifle into an unlit doorway like an unwanted umbrella. Hanzo tucked Peacekeeper into it's holster and tugged the serape around to cover it. Then they both walked, with perfect composure, down the sidewalk, staring at the cops and paramedics and harbour navy forces because that's what normal, curious, law abiding pedestrians did when they saw police exerting themselves.

"What's going on back over..." McCree started, and the police officer designated to keep the public back waved them on hastily without answering.

They could hurry after that.

They didn't speak again until they'd made it back to their hotel, slipping in past the dozing front desk clerk and up the stairs to their floor.

"Nope, you're with me," McCree hissed. He caught Hanzo's arm and tugged him left instead of right, yanking him to his room. "Ana's waiting for you in your room and you’re going to need a better story then “I wanted to knock out McCree and try and get myself killed” before you talk to her."

"You just want to kill me first," Hanzo said flatly.  

"Fair's fair," McCree said adroitly, opening his door and shoving Hanzo through. "You goddamn idiot. The hell were you thinking." He shut the door behind them and rounded on Hanzo.

He was furious. Now that the danger was past and the risk of capture avoided, McCree’s anger was off the leash and snarling. He was so angry he was shaking.

Which was fine, Hanzo could use a fight. "Exactly what you were thinking.”  

"I was going..." McCree started, then stopped. "I could have handled it." He snapped.

Hanzo just glared at McCree. It had been a trap, an ambush deliberately set up with no possibility of McCree making it out of there and they both knew it.

"No call for you to go on the offencive like that, you think I liked watching you staring down Brenda-Jean? She'd have killed you if you'd done even one thing different then you did. And you were about to give her my..."

"And what would she have done to you?" Hanzo's voice cracked out before he could stop it. "Would you have offered her Peacekeeper? Or would you have allowed her to simply take it from your corpse?"

"I had a..." McCree started and Hanzo actually stepped towards him, slashing his arm down impatiently.

"What plan?" Hanzo demanded. "You wanted to go because you knew what would happen if you didn't. So did I. You're not the only one here who understands how gangs think. You're not the only one here who understands how small the community of organized crime really is."

McCree hesitated, blinking at Hanzo. That thought had apparently not occurred to him.

"I knew exactly what you were expecting," Hanzo snarled, "The gun was an excuse. You were walking into an execution and you knew it. You just didn’t know that I knew it as well.”

"So why'd you walk in for me," McCree slipped the comment in fast and easy, not giving Hanzo time to take a breath.

Hanzo would have been brought up short if he wasn't so angry. As it was he felt his composure and reserve and rationality and all his inclination for secrecy ignite and turn to ash inside him.

He snarled straight back into McCree's face. "I watch you stare down every enemy on every mission. I watch you fight up close in the line of fire every time we’re deployed and I know you'll be alright because I'm watching over you. I know you’re safe in the front line because I know I'm going to protect you from everything."

McCree was the one dragged up short. He was staring at Hanzo with his eyes wide and his mouth open.

"I'd rather walk into any trap, any ambush, any execution anyone could lay rather than know you were going into it alone," Hanzo snarled, his voice was harsh and loud in the small room. The anger was hot in his throat, he needed McCree to see this, understand it. "I am your back line, I am your defence," if Hanzo could have laid that word down with a sledge hammer he would have. "I'm here to _defend_ you. You are never again going to go into danger alone for as long as I'm alive, Jesse McCree."

Hanzo hadn't realized he'd taken another step towards McCree, then another, and when he finished, they were close enough that Hanzo was snarling up into McCree's face. Close enough he could feel the heat coming off McCree's skin.

They stood quiet for a second. McCree actually backed a step, looking down and away. He swallowed.

"Hanzo," McCree started, and his voice was soft. He glanced up, caught Hanzo's furious gaze and looked away. "You're making a coward of me Hanzo."

Hanzo suddenly realized McCree was still in his baggy sweatpants and thin shirt, just a black hoodie pulled on overtop. He was barefoot, his feet scuffed and dirty, the edge of one foot was bleeding. He'd followed Hanzo unarmed, unarmored and apparently without hesitation. He'd killed the gang member in the tower with his hands for the rifle he used to cover Hanzo's escape.

"You fight people close enough to use one of those flash-bangs, you're no coward," Hanzo retorted. But he could feel his anger cooling into awkward gratitude and embarrassment.

"More than you might think," McCree reached up and gently took his hat off Hanzo's head. "Looks good on you."

"Better on it's owner," Hanzo said without thinking.

"Hanzo," it came out almost as a laugh, McCree ducked his head like a boy, both hands on his hat brim. Then he stilled and seemed to collect himself. "You never noticed me being a coward huh?"

"I know you're not..." Hanzo retorted, then froze, voice dying on his tongue because McCree gently rubbed the backs of his fingers up Hanzo's cheek, and then slipped his fingers into Hanzo's loose hair, tucking it behind his ear.

"Guess I wasn't as bad at hiding it then I thought," McCree murmured.

"Hiding..." Hanzo blinked, caught himself leaning into McCree's hand and entirely failed to stop himself.

"Thought you didn't much care for me," McCree said softly, "So I tried being pragmatic about it. But you broke into Ana's room and stole her sleep gun, shot a quick draw gunslinger at point blank range then walked up to the most dangerous gang member from here to New York and shot her six times in the throat. So, I guess you can't be too impartial to me."

"Not... Impartial at all," Hanzo said. He was barely able to get the words out. McCree's hand was cupping his cheek and his thumb was brushing slowly back and forth.

"Thank you," Hanzo said, bullying the words out. "For covering me."

"It ain't easy," McCree touched Hanzo's other cheek with his left hand, the metal was cold from their time outside, "Never much liked the sharpshooting. Good as I got at it." He looked at Hanzo and tipped his head slightly. "I'm much obliged Hanzo, never thanked you before but, you keep me safer then I knew."

"That's..." Hanzo started and then broke off again, because McCree was standing very close to him, with his hands on Hanzo's cheeks, and Hanzo realized his hands were at McCree's hips.

"And thank you," McCree murmured, "For taking on the entire contingent of the Deadlock Gang on my behalf."

Hanzo swallowed. "Next time you're invited to an ambush, I'll cover you."

"Sure," McCree gave a genuine little half smile, "Not sure how many ambushes you think I'll be invited to, but you got a deal."

Hanzo leaned up, closed the distance between them and kissed McCree while he was still smiling. He felt McCree's little intake of breath on his mouth, and pulled back slightly.

"Too many," Hanzo answered. "Already it's been too many ambushes."

"You'll cover me," McCree whispered, his hands were gentle on the sides of Hanzo's face and the dawning joy on his face was almost painfully sweet.

Hanzo nodded, and raised one hand to press to the back of McCree’s as he leaned into his palm. "McCree," he said quietly.

"Right," McCree ducked his head, hiding a grin, quick and warm and real. "Yeah, Hanzo I got you," and the last word was lost because he pressed it into Hanzo's mouth, leaning down to kiss him. Soft and warm and tentative because they couldn't stand to risk hurting each other.

They kissed until one of them opened their mouth, tentative and hungry and then it got hot and wet and filthy. Hanzo and McCree wrapping around one another until they broke for breath panting.

"Is Ana really camped in my room?" Hanzo asked, wondering how the hell he was going to make it to dawn.

"Yes," McCree said, a little too quickly to know for sure, and grinned. "So you'd better stay here."

Hanzo didn't care if McCree was lying. He was grateful that McCree knew his own clothes, and how to get out of them, better then Hanzo did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! This McHanzo week has been wonderful, and I'm still sitting on days 5, 6, and 7, and fretting over them. These prompts have given me so many new ideas and gotten me writing so much. It's been a pleasure. If there's a chapter in here that you liked, please let me know in the comments or on my tumblr at leoandlancer.tumblr.com/ask . I have more of everything planned, and knowing what works would really help me out to prioritize what to work on!  
> I post new fic on Mondays, next week will be the first chapter of a Zarya/Mei fic I've been cherishing for some time.  
> Thank you again (｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡  
> This work was unbeta'd so any horribly embarrassing grammar or spelling mistakes are my own fault, and I apologize.


	5. Ultimate Swap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note this chapter has some descriptions of violence, and takes place during an active mission, take care!  
> Ultimate swap chapter! The Young Love chapter was supposed to come before this but I've already rewritten it three times and so it's relegated to the later pile until it can stop becoming a multi-chapter angst fest. Sorry the chapters are out of order!

It was a hot, breezy day when Hanzo walked ahead of McCree up the smooth slope of the hillside. Their base, Overwatch's fourth commandeered safe house in as many months, was below them, a lodge on the shore of a lake settled in the bowl of the valley. It was quiet, and empty, and when the omnic crisis had ripped most of the populated world apart, this little bowl of green grass and jutting stone and blue glacial water had stayed empty and peaceful. Clouds raced high overhead and their shadows chased up over the grass, past McCree and Hanzo as they climbed.

"What," McCree was panted slightly as scrambled up a steep outcropping, "Are we doing out here, Sunshine?"

Hanzo didn't answer, he didn't really know what to call what he was doing, just that he had thought of it weeks ago, and here, alone in the remote heights of the highlands with only Mercy, Winston, Orisa and Ana resting up in the lodge below them, seemed like the place to test it.

"I mean, sure is nice up here," McCree went on, still panting as he heaved himself up the headland.

He wasn't wrong. Behind them, the lake reflected the worn green mountains, the streaks of ancient glacial scarring, the blue sky overhead, and the clouds racing over it all. The valley widened out around a curve, the lake falling fast in a long streak of white water rapids into a fjord between green cliffs. An osprey soared high over the waters of the lake, almost level with them on the mountain side. Its cry came clearly to them then echoed.

McCree waved at the stunning view with one hand and without looking back at it as he scrambled after Hanzo. "But I have to say whatever we're doing's at one hell of an altitude, and just after lunch, and just after a mission and shouldn't you be restin' after the beating you took?"

"No." Hanzo walked on easily, they were more than halfway up the mountainside, and he could see where the land leveled out into a plateau few people ever saw. He had come here a few days ago, he had looked for a place like this.

"Sure," McCree muttered, pulling himself up after Hanzo.

They climbed on for a while, Hanzo taking an easier pace for McCree to keep up, McCree muttering about how if he had been the one to catch a beating like the one Hanzo had taken they wouldn't be here. Which was perfectly true, Hanzo could concede that willingly. When McCree had needed rest after a bad mission a few weeks ago, Hanzo had shelved this little experiment, and sat with McCree until he recovered.

They reached the top of the mountain, and the shaggy plateau of clover and heather and grass stretched out while the osprey wheeled in the windy air above them. Away down to the east, the valley and the curved arch of the river towards the open fjord was raising a mist that turned the cliffs feather-light blue where they dropped away at the open ocean. The lodge where the rest of their team was recovering was mirrored perfectly in the flat water of the lake.  

Hanzo held his bow out to McCree.

McCree, bent over with his hands on his knees, panting and slightly flushed from the climb, looked at it, looked back up at Hanzo, and cocked his head to the side without troubling himself to waste his breath on questions.

"Take it," Hanzo said.

"Sunshine, I don't follow." McCree made and effort and pushed himself upright.

"The dragons," Hanzo said, remembering he had a few weeks to think about this and McCree had some catching up to do, "I think they'll allow you to release them."

"The..." McCree looked at the bow, looked at Hanzo's tattoo and backed a step. "No. They're yours."

Hanzo nodded, his expression didn't change. McCree looked a little alarmed now, maybe even scared, but Hanzo knew what he was asking, and he needed to know the answer. "They'll listen to you. You can send them."

"They come to me for chin scratches." McCree shook his head again, looking troubled. "They open my bedroom door when we're not sharing quarters and wake me up. They knock my hat off and chew my hair if I let em. Hanzo, you're asking me to send them out like a weapon. I ain't never told ‘em to do no more than stop knockin’ my water over. They don’t even listen to me over that."

"They will." Hanzo was almost positive. He still held the bow out between them.

"They never had to follow any orders from anyone other than you, Sunshine, I don't want to..." McCree looked more stubborn than alarmed, maybe scared. "Can't have them hurt from anything I do to ‘em."

"It won't hurt anyone." Hanzo, worried that McCree's reticence might make his own resolve waver, pushed Stormbow into McCree's chest. "Take it. Try."

"Don't want to take this from you," McCree said, looking more unsure than ever with Stormbow cradled in his arms like a child.

"I want to lend you this power," Hanzo said. He had spent weeks thinking about this, weeks to prepare and to reflect and to meditate with the dragons curled on either side of him.

"Why?" McCree looked up from Stormbow, straight into Hanzo's eyes and for a moment Hanzo nearly backed down.

McCree hadn't been hurt in their last mission, but he'd nearly died on the mission before that. 

Hanzo didn’t like thinking about it. The nightmares had dogged him for weeks afterwards. A building had come down between them in an explosion that had knocked Lucio into an alley and trapped him there with Roadhog. While Junkrat was still clawing his way towards them, McCree had been caught alone by their target. 

Hanzo had barely reached a vantage point in time, and sent an arrow into a man with a heavy fist and a hunting knife and McCree pinned under him. Then, to Hanzo's horror, their target had ignored the arrow in his shoulder, and slammed the knife into McCree's chest before McCree caught his wrist and fought to hold him up.

Hanzo had dropped to the street and charged. 

He didn’t notice their other targets either, heavy omnics with rifles for arms and their attention snapping to him as he ran. He didn’t know that Sombra had been with him. Didn’t know that Junkrat had gotten Roadhog and Lucio out from the alleyway and they were coming too. All Hanzo could see was that there was blood on McCree’s chest, running down his ribs to the street. 

He could hardly breathe around his panic, hardly see with the blood roaring in his ears. Hanzo knew he had to get the man off of McCree before he was impaled.

Two hostile omnics with saw Hanzo racing towards them, and tipped their focus onto him with lazy certainty. They knew that one man with an ancient weapon wasn't going to be hard to kill, especially since Hanzo couldn't begin to care that he was about to be torn apart by rifle fire. He was still more concerned that McCree was losing the fight to hold the knife out of his chest and had cried out as another inch jerked down into him.

Then Sombra burst up in a jump ahead of him, flickering out of invisibility as a purple shockwave erupted around her.

"EMP activated," she called, landed in a crouch, raised her pistol and lunged forwards. The two omnics visibly panicked as Sombra raced between them, machine pistol chattering as they struggled to defend themselves. Junkrat's grenades began bouncing down from behind Hanzo and three more hostiles screamed and scrambled around.

“Get McCree, we’ll cover you,” Sombra called to him.

Their primary target was crouched over McCree like an animal, putting his weight on the handle of the knife to bully it down into McCree.

Lucio's music was ringing in Hanzo's ears, speeding him on as he fired arrow after arrow and it wasn’t enough. Hanzo realized with sick dread that their target was already dying, and didn't care because when he died, it would just put all his weight onto the butt of his knife. When he died, he would run McCree through. 

Hanzo couldn't get there in time. Arrows wouldn't protect Mcree this time. Killing was the only answer Hanzo had and this time it was worthless. Hanzo couldn't defend McCree. 

Except the dragons could. Hanzo couldn't breathe, couldn't aim, hadn't drawn his arrow back or called to them, they had simply burst uncalled for out of his tattoo and streaked, uncoordinated and feral, towards McCree, and swarmed over him protectively, growling and snarling. 

Their target started back, his shoulders fringed in arrows, his face and hands bloody, backing as the legendary Guardians of the Shimada Clan lunged at his throat and eyes and swarmed around his neck like feral beasts. McCree coughed, swore, and pulled Peacekeeper to bear. The dragons flickered and vanished and their target died at point blank range from a single shot and fell backwards to the street.

Hanzo hadn't called his dragons to do that. Hanzo wouldn't have been able to.

"They'll let you call them," Hanzo said quietly. The peace of the empty mountain around him, the heat of the sun on his back and the cool wind in his hair grounded him back to the present. Back to weeks after that horrible day had passed. McCree was right here, safe where he should be with Hanzo to protect him.

"Why?" McCree asked, he was studying the intricate decoration on the bow, the grip where Hanzo's hand had worn it smooth. "Why do you need to know if they will or not?"

That was a longer story than Hanzo thought he could deal with. It was a question that could answer for years of uncertainty, years of doubt and sadness. He didn't have any words to frame why this was so important. "Please," he finally said.

"You sure?" McCree's hands closed over Stormbow carefully, a little less like a man cradling a treasured artifact, and a little more like someone who knew how to aim straight.

"Please try." Hanzo looked up from the bow to McCree. He thought of the savagery of his little spirit animals, so rare to see them outside of battle. Small and quick and friendly, hanging around McCree, following him whenever they could. They only showed themselves to Hanzo when McCree was around, or when he was trying to meditate. He had never heard of any of the Shimada dragons attacking without being called upon. He had never heard of what he'd seen on the day McCree had nearly died.

He had never seen the dragons fall asleep with their tongues peeking out of their mouths before this year. But he'd seen them asleep on McCree's lap, churring in quiet contentment as he absently rubbed at their manes.

"Don't want to upset them, they're friendly little things," McCree said.

"They adore you," Hanzo said shortly. He hadn't been examining that fact much. He hadn't thought about why his guardians had taken to McCree so strongly. He had been trying to ignore that.

"They--" McCree started, then broke off, looking down at the bow in his arms.

"Try," Hanzo said again. "They'll come for you if you ask them to."

"Alright," McCree murmured, and shifted, taking the bow in his left hand and hefting it slightly. It looked unwieldy in his hands, the grace that came with Peacekeeper apparently didn't follow him to other weapons. "Alright," he said more quietly.

Hanzo nodded and passed him an arrow, gestured off to the wide, empty expanse of the the mountain plateau. He didn't ask if McCree knew how to shoot with a bow and arrow, he didn't have to. McCree nocked the arrow, hefted the bow up with old familiarity.

"Wait." McCree shook his head, easing the bow down again. "Wait, how do you even... They're never going to..."

"Try," Hanzo asked again. He could feel the dragon's under his skin, quiet and ready. Without thinking, he stepped up a little behind McCree, and put his right hand up to McCree's shoulder.

"You sure?"  McCree hesitated again, and his shoulder was perfectly still under Hanzo's hand.

For a second, he wondered when the last time was that he touched McCree without it being a casual brush when they were cooking together, or sitting side by side. He couldn't remember, but he must have, sometime, he must have touched McCree when it wasn't unintentional, or during a mission.

McCree was as still as a man trying not to spook a horse.

Hanzo stepped up a little closer behind him, settled his hand a little more surely on McCree's shoulder, rubbing the woven wool of the red serape under the edge of his thumb.

"Try it," Hanzo murmured, staring at the back of McCree's neck with his head dipped a little forward. He didn't know why his face felt hot.

"Right." McCree swallowed, and huffed a quick breath, and his shoulder shifted under Hanzo's hand. "Right. What do I say Hanzo?"

"Anything, nothing," Hanzo said, feeling stupid for not thinking about that earlier. He swallowed, and kept his eyes on the curling brown hair at the nape of McCree's neck. "They'll come whether you call them or not."

For the second time, McCree brought Stormbow up, and this time he pulled the arrow back until the fletching was at his cheek.

Hanzo gasped, and felt the jolt when the dragon's surged with some unfamiliar power under his skin and then-

They didn't leave him.

Instead, McCree called something that Hanzo didn't hear over a blast of hot, dry wind, and the arrow shot from the bow and the air before them cracked hot and red and tore open.

Then Hanzo and McCree both staggered at the force of what charged out of the bright white window and raced after the path of the arrow.

The dragons roared under Hanzo’s skin, the tattoo blazing hot and bright as Hanzo stepped up next to McCree.

A herd of wild horses was racing away from them. Their manes and tails streamed in a wind that felt hot and dry, that swept up dust and sand in a cloud from the misty heather of the plateau. Hanzo could smell dust and sage and the weight that came from dry, weeks-long heat. The horses were beautiful, huge and shining and Hanzo had never seen anything so wild.

"Dapple greys," McCree whispered, "paints and bays."

Hanzo couldn't look at him, he couldn't even close his mouth. The herd was turning, looping around the plateau in a wide arc, manes and tails flying in a wind that belonged to another part of the world. Their long strides pounding over the heather and raising red dust that didn't exist here.

They turned and then they were charging, their eyes were flat white, nostrils wide and they leant forward into their gallop as they rounded the curve of the plateau and began to race back the way they had come. The big hooves hammering down fast and hard, thundering over the earth so the ground trembled. The herd, as one, leant into their run charging towards McCree and Hanzo.

McCree stood tall beside Hanzo, watching as the huge, shining horses raced towards them.

Hanzo realized McCree's hand had taken his, and he had no idea when that had happened or who had started it, but they stood hand in hand while dozens of horses charged flat out towards them. The noise of their gallop rose until it was deafening, and the earth trembled under their feet.

The horses were close enough to touch when the leaders tipped their heads, leaned to one side, and the herd split to either side. Then the rest of the herd poured past them, dust and flashing manes, flowing tails and flat white eyes as the luminous horses galloped past McCree and Hanzo without touching them, close enough Hanzo could feel the wind from their passing. 

Hanzo held his breath as the earth shook with the thunder of a hundred hoof beats.

Then there was a roar of wind that tore the scarf from Hanzo's hair and the horses were past them, and they stared out at the flat open green of the plateau, at the blue sky and racing clouds and the long valley to the ocean beyond that. When they turned, they found that the plateau empty, and the horses were gone.  

"Well," McCree said softly. "Don't that beat all."

Hanzo's hand was still in McCree's, and he didn't let go. They stared out at the wide bowl of the valley, at the cliffs going misty blue towards the ocean, at the flat mirror bright expanse of the lake and their safe house perched on it's shores.

"How did you know they wouldn't run us down?" McCree asked after a moment.

"What?"

McCree huffed a quick breath, his hand was warm and steady in Hanzo's. "How did you know the horses wouldn't hurt us."

Hanzo blinked and looked at him with his mouth open. His heart was still beating painfully fast against his ribs. "I thought you did."

McCree looked down at him. "It's your ultimate!"

They stared at one another in mute astonishment, then McCree snorted, tipped his head down and laughed. Hanzo watched as McCree couldn't stop himself, but laughed until he put his head back, then sat back, all at once, still howling, into the heather. Hanzo didn't let go of his hand and sat down with him, struggling to contain his own relieved grin.

"You," McCree gasped, "Didn't know? I shot your ultimate out of your bow and we got charged down by a herd of horses and you didn't know if they would kill us?"

"I've never done this," Hanzo said, struggling to keep his voice even. It was hard to remain haughty when he had spent so much time with McCree, when they were holding hands under the warm sun of the plateau, safe and sound and they had done it. Something Hanzo had been sure McCree could do but could never have guessed how he’d have managed it. "And it wasn't my ultimate. That wasn't the dragons."

McCree didn't have dragons under his skin, not like Hanzo, or Genji or any of the Shimadas, that was something that should have occurred to Hanzo before.

"Shoot," McCree managed to control himself, and shook his head a little ruefully. "Didn't think that would work at all. Sure didn't think that would happen, either.

"Me either," Hanzo admitted.

 

They sat together in the heather, McCree still chuckling with his long legs before him, Hanzo kneeling with his legs folded under him. They kept their hands joined, hidden between them in the heather, neither of them willing to pull away.

"Hell of a thing, Hanzo," McCree murmured when his laughter had died away. "You get your answer?"

Hanzo was thinking about that. He had gotten an answer, certainly. It was more than he had thought, and so much more than he could have imagined. It wasn't what he had wanted, and not what he'd expected. But it was definitive. And Hanzo ached with the happy, dawning realization inside him. This was more than he could have asked for. "Yes," Hanzo said softly. "It was beautiful."

McCree looked around at him in surprise, and Hanzo swallowed, looking down at the heather before him, and kept his hand in McCree's.

"Would never have expected it to..." McCree started, then trailed off. Hanzo just nodded.

"Nothing about you could be expected," Hanzo said with honesty that went deeper than he wanted to examine.

"I'll take that as a compliment," McCree murmured. He was smiling at Hanzo, studying his profile and apparently unable to look away.

Hanzo couldn't think of anything to say, but McCree didn't seem to need anything more, and smiled a little wider when Hanzo looked back at him. They sat side by side, under the clouds drifting past them over head, the early blooms of the clover waving gently, their hands joined and hidden in the heather between them, studying each other's smiles.

 

* * *

 

Hanzo thought of that afternoon above the lake in the sunshine a lot over the next few weeks. But the next time the reality of what they had managed hit him, he was cradling McCree in his arms, shaking with panic while a mercenary with a gun slammed at the wall they hid behind. Thought of it because McCree kept his face buried in his hands against Hanzo's shoulder, and shook and swore while blood ran down his face and tangled in his beard.

The mission hadn't been a disaster until someone had recognized McCree. A man in the group they were attempting to drive out of the mostly abandoned suburban town had looked straight at McCree, and called to him by name.

McCree had frozen, looked around at the man, little more than a teenager, and gone white as a sheet. He hadn't seen the attack coming, he had been staring at the young merc when one of their targets had seen their opportunity, and chucked a grenade at McCree.

Hanzo had killed the mercenary who’d thrown the grenade and had known McCree could dodge roll out of its blast range. He had been lining up his next shot on the next target when he'd heard Soldier 76 shout a warning, panic in his voice, and then he'd heard McCree scream.

He had looked back in time to see McCree fall.

The grenade had torn McCree’s right shoulder up, sent shrapnel up under his jaw, over his cheek. It had sent shards of steel and glass into his wide eyes.

The mission had gone straight to hell in the second after that. McCree had been in the front line with Orisa and Soldier, and with him down, their targets pushed their advantage, rolling over the area McCree had been covering to harry Orisa. She fell back to Soldier and together they fought side by side, but couldn't break the attacking line and were forced back until they were cut off.

Hanzo wasn't sure what had happened after that. He had dropped from his perch and dashed to McCree, and together, Hanzo half carrying, half supporting McCree, they had managed to find a place to hide. McCree collapsed then, and his weight dragged them both down until Hanzo held McCree as tightly as he could, his back against the wall.

It wasn't the best hiding place. An empty condo with the doors and windows long smashed in, ivy and creepers crawling over the walls from the broken windows and weeds and moss creeping over the rotting carpet. There was a broken TV on the wall, some broken furniture, a bureau that looked like it had been pilfered decades ago. There was nothing to show who might have lived here before, if anyone had been happy here once. 

Certainly no one was happy here now. Hanzo panted and clutched McCree, who was hiding his bloody face in both hands. They were sitting, Hanzo curled protectively over McCree, with their backs to the wall, right beside an open doorway with the door long gone, and innumerable gun-runners and mercenaries in the overgrown courtyard outside. They were close enough the hear them talking, hear the little noises from the guns as they were casually reloaded.

Hanzo tried to think, tried to reason with himself, scrape together what he knew about their situation. Zenyatta had been on the west side flank and was probably with Soldier and Orisa. They were probably fine together, and probably the reason for all the screaming and gunfire that was coming out of the west wing of the condos. Ana was around here somewhere. Ana had been behind them, focusing on Orisa and McCree, and she was probably coming to them. If she could find them. Probably she could. Hopefully.

But not in time.

"Hanzo." McCree had blood in his mouth and his shaking was getting weaker.

"Quiet." Hanzo could hear someone on the other side of the wall. Heavy steps, unfamiliar and getting closer to the doorway. The gun-runners weren't hurrying their search, everyone who had seen McCree go down knew he wouldn't make it far.

"Hanzo, go get Ana," McCree said.

"No."

"You can still move," McCree said, his quiet, pained voice half steady reasoning, half a plea. "You won't die here."

"We aren't dying anywhere."

"Please." McCree wiped his face with both hands, smearing blood over his cheeks and across his temples.

For the first time, Hanzo saw McCree's face, saw the damage the grenade had done to his eyes, and he felt his gut go cold. Hanzo suddenly felt so sick he couldn't breath.

"Hanzo, I can't see."

"Quiet," Hanzo forced himself to whisper. His hands curled a little tighter into where he held onto McCree. Ana could fix this, she could bring people back from this. This was temporary. McCree would be fine after this.

The heavy footsteps thumped on the other side of the wall behind them and paused at the yawning doorway. The noise from the west side of the compound suddenly stopped. Hanzo hadn't realized he'd been listening to the unceasing rattle of Orisa's cannon until it was gone.

"Hanzo, you can't save me, please, just don't you die here..."

Hanzo shut his eyes. “Quiet,” he breathed. He couldn’t hear this, couldn’t listen to McCree telling him this. He had no words for this and he didn’t know what to do but he couldn’t leave McCree here. 

Someone turned and stepped into their little hiding place.

The gun-runner was big, moving slowly and holding a rifle in a grip so easy it seemed offensively casual. Someone coming to kill McCree when he was hurt and bloody and shaking in Hanzo’s arms. That thought, more than any other, made Hanzo react. 

In one huge, explosive move that had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with feral panic and dread, Hanzo snapped up. He forgot his arrows, and his dragons, and all his years of training since he had given up the sword. He just lunged up with his bow in both hands and swung into the head of the gangster just as he was turning to look down at them.

The man in the door caught the bow flat across the face and didn't have time to register how badly broken his skull was. He keeled over backwards with his head back and his arms swinging up from sheer momentum.

The rifle hit the floor and clattered over and lay still. The runner crashed down without uttering a sound. 

Hanzo was panting through his teeth, his stance wide, bow held stupidly to one side in both hands like a sword.

With it's broken string trailing from both ends.

Looking down over a second floor landing at an overgrown courtyard of gun runners.

Who all heard the sound of a big man dying before he hit cracked concrete like a sack of shit.

Hanzo dropped back behind the wall before anyone looked up and swore in every language he knew all in one savage breathless torrent.

"How bad?" McCree asked.

Hanzo didn't answer. He didn't have the time he'd need to put on a new string. He couldn't fire his dragons, didn't know if they would come out like feral little beasts again, didn't have anything left to defend McCree with. Without knowing what he was doing, Hanzo blindly reached for McCree, and drew him in until Hanzo could cover him.

"That bad, huh?" McCree's voice was getting softer and he spoke into Hanzo’s shoulder. There was blood all around them now, it was sticky and cool on the side of Hanzo's leg, across his chest where he had been holding McCree hard against him. Hanzo could hear McCree talking through the blood in his mouth.

"I broke my bow." The words went through him, leaving him hollowed out and empty. Broken his bow by treating it like a sword. He'd given up the sword years ago, but apparently it hadn't given up on him. His form had been flawless.

McCree was propped up against him, head bowed, and went quiet beside him, so quiet Hanzo wasn't sure if he had slipped out of consciousness. Hanzo forced himself to wipe blood off his bow, pulling the broken string free and setting the bow aside. As if he would have time to tend to it later. He reached for McCree and gently pulled him back into his arms, putting his back towards the door and shielding his partner.

Someone shouted in the courtyard. The big man lying dead in their front door had apparently been noticed.

"Hanzo, run," McCree whispered.

"I won't." Fighting his way out, surrounded and separated from the others, wouldn’t be impossible. But leaving McCree to die was.

"Please." McCree shook his head weakly, his head was tucked under Hanzo's chin and he somehow found it in him to draw himself closer, pushing into Hanzo's chest. "Don't die here."

"I not leaving you," Hanzo whispered, he kept his eyes shut, his head tilted forward slightly over with McCree curled up over his knees and against his chest.

"You stay and we'll both-"

"That's fine," Hanzo said with an honesty that surprised him. "It's preferable to just me making it out."

"Hanzo, you stubborn son of a bitch listen to me, you make it out, you get Ana and the others. You come back and get me when you've gutted this place and left it quiet." McCree shook his head again, anger or desperation making his voice rough. "You don't die here because I was a damn fool."

"Who was that man who called to you?" Hanzo said, adroitly changing the distasteful subject and leaving it lying there.

McCree was quiet for a long moment, then went on quietly, "We called him Digger. He was a baby when I was just a scrap of a teenager. Born into Deadlock. I helped raise him."

Hanzo didn't know what he could possibly say. He forgot sometimes that McCree had grown up, that he had grown powerful, in the belly of a gang that had rivaled the Shimada's.

"Taught him to read," McCree went on, slower. "I taught him to shoot."

"I'm sorry."

"I tried to teach him..." McCree trailed off.

In the courtyard below them, someone called a bearing and Hanzo stiffened. Then he heard Ana's voice bark a short, sharp curse. The sound of her biotic grenade cracked around the condo’s grimy walls and a few people yelled in pain and shock.

The footsteps that had been heading in their direction stopped, and then began running back the way they came.

"Hanzo, get up," McCree said, and there was clear urgency in his voice. His body had gone tense and stiff in Hanzo's arms.

"I told you I'm not going-" Hanzo started, and McCree cut him off.

"Get up and take Peacekeeper."

Hanzo hesitated, but McCree was pushing himself up, shaking blood off his face as he got one hand on the wall to steady himself and the other went to Peacekeeper at his hip.

"Take it Hanzo," McCree growled. "Use Deadeye."

"I can't," Hanzo said quickly. He suddenly felt the heavy realization that he was  _ literally  _ about to disappoint McCree to death. He was going to get them both killed. "I won't be able..."

"I shot a herd of wild horses out your damn bow," McCree growled. Peacekeeper was lying on his open palm between them, the metal glinting from between the blood smears. "At least we both already know you can shoot straight."

"It's not," Hanzo said, fighting through a rising panic. He couldn't do this. He couldn't let McCree have this hope and disappoint him. He couldn't fail McCree like this. He couldn’t do this. "That was different, the dragon's chose you."

"Then they know best. They know we're partners. So take it." McCree pushed Peacekeeper forward, and the backs of his knuckles pressed to Hanzo's chest. "Take it. You'll know what to do."

"I won't," Hanzo snapped. But he was already moving to take Peacekeeper. The gun was heavy in his hand, the weight unfamiliar, more centered, more condensed than his bow ever was. He swallowed, and looked at McCree, head bowed with his hair hanging over his bloody face, shaking as he forced himself up onto his knees with one hand leaving a wide, red smear on the wall.

Outside in the courtyard, Ana cursed again and someone shouted. A chatter of rifle fire cracked out unexpectedly.

"Try it," McCree whispered, "Please. Ana can’t get to us with them down there, Hanzo, you can make the shot."

Hanzo remembered the hot, sunny day weeks ago when they had climbed to the flat topped green mountain over the glacial lake. Remembered asking McCree to answer a question that had been quietly dogging Hanzo ever since the dragons had taken to pestering McCree. Maybe even before then. Maybe he had been trying to answer this question since they’d met.

"Try, Hanzo, you got this," McCree whispered. "I trust you."

"Might kill your Digger," Hanzo whispered. That wouldn't stop him, but he had already tried to kill his own brother. He didn't want to kill McCree's surrogate kin as well. 

"Digger's got good instincts," McCree's voice, unbelievably, huffed a breathless little chuckle as he spoke. "That boy's long gone. Soon as he saw me, he knew he had a better place to be."

Hanzo swallowed and his hand closed over Peacekeeper, it was heavy and unfamiliar, the grip felt awkward in his hand. 

The courtyard outside was busy, nearly a dozen of the mercenaries and gun-runners jogging back and forth, looking left then right at the line of the condo roofs with ludacris unity. Ana must be somewhere above, them.

She was being a wonderful distraction.

Hanzo shut his eyes and let out a long, shaking breath. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to start.

Apparently his training did though. The dutiful child in him that had practiced with a wooden sword until his blisters bled didn't care that he didn't know how to use McCree's Deadeye. When he had been a child, he hadn't known how to use the sword he was being trained to take up. Back then, his hands were always sore and his body ached and he was always tired, always training for something. He had no tattoo and a brother who adored him and had never even tried to use a bow. He had been full of purpose then, full of the knowledge of the great deeds he would do through the diligence of his training. He knew what he could accomplished through showing devotion to his family. Back then, he hadn't known anything. He had only learned the form, the process, and he had become familiar with his own body and it's responses. He had only known that he had to try, and back then he'd been fearless at the prospect of trying.

Back then, he’d been good enough.

Standing in the gaping doorway with a dead man at his feet, with McCree shaking and blind behind him, staring at a shaggy courtyard full of killers, that thought hit him hard enough to make him flinch. He lowered himself back to his knees, head down, looking at Peacekeeper on his lap. His heart was pounding and his head felt cloudy with wild panic. He wasn't a child anymore. He knew better. He wasn't good enough.

"McCree," Hanzo murmured. His voice sounded broken, even to his own ears. Any moment, the gun runners would see them, would turn and a brief burst of fire would end him.

"I'm here." McCree was behind him. He had dragged himself to his feet and was standing just behind Hanzo. His bloody hands settled lightly over Hanzo's eyes, blocking out the courtyard, the gun runners, and somehow, the snarling mess of panic inside him. "Don't think about it. Just look as long as you need to, and pull the trigger."

Hanzo forced himself to breath. McCree's fingertips were just barely touching his cheek and in the darkness behind his bloody hands Hanzo ruthlessly dragged himself together. "Alright," Hanzo said.

He had to be good enough for this. Had to be good enough for McCree.

McCree pulled his hands back and Hanzo's head came up and his eyes were wide as he looked out at the courtyard.

Suddenly, his breath was knocked out of him as something else roared through his head and slammed against the inside of his right eye and stared out.

Something was inside him, something clawing itself closer, further into the iris of Hanzo’s right eye. It was huge and hungry made of sunbleached bones and jagged teeth and the steady anger that came from ancient violence. Something that his dragon's had caught in their teeth then let pass. Something that came from McCree, and would never hurt him.

Hanzo felt his heart flutter in his chest because he heard a flute somewhere above him, felt his dragons rise and surge under his skin, felt the moment as each of his targets in the courtyard became a dead man with a heartbeat he could take from them. Cherry blossoms drifted down, a soft, pink trail that blew over this wild place. The world was blue and grey and brilliant with gold shining at the edges of the people he was about to kill.

Then he lunged up, power and certainty and the diligence that came from years of unwavering training for something nothing like this. Peacekeeper snapped out bright and fast with a sound of a sword leaving its scabbard and Hanzo's hands moved fast and easy over it. He shot into the bright gold edging of targets, one after another after another, and they all died without looking around, without seeing their death or knowing it was coming for them.

Bodies dropped like meat, silence fell and Hanzo let a long, slow breath out. He was surprised his hands weren’t shaking.

"There," McCree breathed. "I knew you'd do it."

Hanzo returned to his basic stance in mute shock, tried to sheath Peacekeeper like a sword and started himself out of his daze by the idiocy.

McCree began to crumple behind him and Hanzo jerked himself back to action and turn to just barely catch McCree before he went down.

"Knew you'd do it," McCree whispered again.

"Hold on," Hanzo said. Together, they sank down, both unwilling, or unable to stand. Hanzo felt slightly light headed and sore. Whatever had looked out from his right eye, whatever had aimed Peacekeeper was gone and had left him shaken. He was used to having perfect control over himself and his actions, used to having control over the dragons, however relaxed he had become of that in McCree's company. He didn't know how he felt about something made of broken bones and ancient spite moving his hand, lining up killing shots faster than he could have moved without it.

"I'm holding," McCree said.

They were on their knees facing each other, McCree's head heavy on Hanzo's shoulder, his arms looped tentatively around Hanzo's waist. Just as tentative, Hanzo reached up, and cupped the back of McCree's neck.

They sat in the near perfect stillness, until McCree shuddered and leaned a little more heavily into Hanzo, and his arms tightened around Hanzo's waist. Hanzo let out a breath, and tipped his head a little, and gently ran one hand up unto McCree's hair and curled his fingers just enough to hold on.

McCree sighed, his body falling still and quietly said, "Hanzo, I'm really glad you dragged me up that mountain to try my hand at shooting your bow."

Hanzo just nodded, and stroked his hand down through McCree's hair. "I heard a flute."

"Me too. Smelled like Hanamura in here for a moment too,"

"There were cherry blossoms." In this sweltering gated suburbia abandoned forty years ago on the wrong side of the world. Then again McCree had summoned a herd of horses to the mountain top above the ocean and usually summoned a tumbleweed anywhere he pleased. Cherry blossoms were relatively blasé when held against that.

"Guess you can't take the lord out of his castle after all."

"What does that say about you?"

"I got tumbleweeds and wild horses for a soul. You got cherry blossoms and a couple of fine dragons to watch out for you."

Hanzo paused. Because that wasn't all McCree had. He could still feel the edges where the thing that had stared out of his right eye and had carved into him to make space for itself. He thought of the red in McCree's eye when he used his Dead Eye. He wondered what the dragons had seen as that ancient, hungry anger had gripped Hanzo’s hands and let him kill. He wondered what McCree saw.

"I knew you'd save us," McCree murmured after a time.

Hanzo stroked his hand gently though McCree's hair again. It was thick with dust and the occasional mat of blood, but the hair at his roots was surprisingly soft, and very warm. "At least one of us did."

McCree snorted and tipped his head a little, leaning into Hanzo's neck, and his next breath was hot and steady over Hanzo's bare chest.

The hand he was stroking through McCree's hair stuttered to a stop, and Hanzo froze for a moment.

"You get a better answer this time, Hanzo?" McCree asked softly. His arms were tight and steady around Hanzo's waist, solid and already familiar.

"Yes," Hanzo said after a moment. His voice was soft, his head tipped down, breathing the word into McCree's hair.

In the instant Hanzo felt his inhibitions give way, the moment he turned his face down towards McCree, something cracked and shattered on the crumbling carpet beside them. An explosion of jagged yellow haze that went straight into both of them hit them and they both flinched.

"This will only hurt for a minute."

Hanzo flinched again as the unearthly contents of Ana's biotic grenade soaked through him. Then he jerked and hissed as Ana resolutely fired her rifle point blank into his back.

"Thank you," he managed, through gritted teeth.

It didn't really hurt, once you got used to it. Ana's technology crept up on you, stayed under your fingernails and left a grainy taste in your mouth and made you feel whole and warm and strong again. But that took a minute. Initially, it felt like getting hit with a grenade and shot with a rifle. She had no bedside manner, but she knew what was best.

"Hey there, Ana," McCree said weakly. "Much obliged."

"You," she said, shooting from the hip as she advanced into the room with the sunshine behind her and over the dead body like a holy judgement while punctuating her words with shots fired directly into McCree's chest. "Foolish boy. Stopping in the middle of battle. Scaring us all senseless. I've never seen Hanzo move so quickly."

"I didn't," Hanzo started, tensing.

"Really?" McCree said at the same time, his voice was slightly strained from the barrage of darts, but he was unmistakably interested. He was sitting in a haze of Ana's biotic rifle trails.

Hanzo shut up as Ana grunted in satisfaction, reloaded, and held her rifle across her arms as she stood over them.

"Then you hide out of my line of sight," she went on, scolding them both and scowling. "I ask you, where is your sense."

"Somewhere around here," said McCree. He was rubbing his eyes. His back was straight, and he seemed whole again and no longer tense with pain. "I'll let you know if we find it."

"Where are the others?" Hanzo, all too keen to get off the topic of his outstandingly bad tactics in the face of McCree going down with a faceful of shrapnel, found he genuinely did want to know where the others were.

"They're perfectly alright," Ana said with reassuring certainty. "I was able to help them, at least. At least Jack knows to stay in my sights."

"Oh, we could learn so much from him," McCree muttered. Apparently this was an old discussion.

"They're coming to us, we'll hold position until they arrive, then we'll move to the extraction point," she went on. Hanzo noticed she was watching McCree as closely as he was.

"Yes ma'am, Captain, ma'am." McCree pulled his hands from his face.

Hanzo held his breath. McCree blinked, rubbed the back of his wrist over his eyes once more, and then looked up. He blinked at Hanzo.

Hanzo let out his breath. Tawney brown eyes, with blood caked on the long lashes and on his skin but McCree looked at him, and smiled.

"Hey, partner."

Hanzo found himself smiling, and didn't bother to stop himself.

"Good. I wasn't too late." Ana shouldered her rifle, tension easing out of her all at once. When she went on, she spoke more slowly, and with more of her usual confidence. She pulled McCree's hat from under her coat and shook it out. "Here." She pushed it at him. "I'm glad I got to you in time."

"Me too," said McCree with real feeling, taking the hat and smiling at Ana. "Thank you."

Ana nodded, then looked at Hanzo. "Now tell me, I saw you break your bow string. So perhaps you could explain why there's eleven foot soldiers lying in the courtyard with arrows driven through them?"

Hanzo and McCree swung around to look at her directly.

She looked between two apparently equally bewildered faces, sighed and turned, heading back out the door and gesturing for them to follow her.

They glanced at one another, both looking perplexed, and then Hanzo rose, and McCree faltered, and Hanzo wordless caught him, and helped him up.

"Thanks," McCree murmured.

"Arrows?" Hanzo left his hand on McCree's arm, and McCree kept his arm where it was around Hanzo's shoulders.

"Arrows." McCree shrugged, and together, they followed Ana over the body in the doorway and out into the courtyard.

Eleven people were scattered on the shaggy grass, draped over broken benches or trailing into overgrown ferns. It was just as Ana had told them. They lay as they had fallen, dead before they hit the ground, with long black arrows jutting from their bodies. It was eerie. All the arrows had hit their targets at the right angle to drive between their ribs, through their chests and probably deep enough to come out the other side. When the bodies had fallen, they had dropped so that each arrow pointed straight up, eleven arrows with bright gold fletching, pointing to the sky.

McCree let out a low whistle.

"And cherry trees can’t grow here," Ana added as they stood quietly.

Hanzo looked around, and found a few pale pink petals among the thick grass, fluttering over cracked concrete and swirling up into little dust devils in the empty fountain.

McCree and Hanzo stood close together in the courtyard that had been growing feral for forty years, and held the bodies of twelve people who had died unexpectedly when Hanzo decided to protect McCree with everything they both had in them.

"Well?" Ana said, looking back at them. Her single golden eye flicked between them, she was barely smiling, and Hanzo knew she was only asking to get them to say it outright.

"He's a fine shot, Ana," McCree said smoothly. "And we made it out just fine."

"Certainly." Ana shot Hanzo a wry smile, then as much as shrugged, and turned away.

The edge of McCree's fingers touched the back of Hanzo's hand, just barely, but it was enough. Hanzo turned his hand and took McCree's hand in his.

"You have my thanks," Hanzo said to McCree. The words sounded awkwardly formal, but he meant them

"Sure, and you've mine," McCree replied, keeping his voice as low as Hanzo had. "That was some fine shooting."

Hanzo couldn't argue, and didn't feel like he could brag about it either. Childhood training, and something made of rage and sun-bleached bone moving his hands, firing eleven black arrows from a gun that held six bullets. "It was something," he admitted.

McCree's hand tightened his his, and they looked around at a shout and saw Orisa gambolling towards them over the tall grass, waving to them happily with a butterfly on one tusk. Zen floated behind her, with Jack resolutely following, his head up, rifle on one shoulder. McCree smiled at them and Hanzo just watched him, smiling back. McCree was steady and whole and warm, with their hands hidden in McCree's serape between them.

"I'm glad you got your answer," McCree said softly, as Ana met Orisa and Zen and Jack, and they could just barely hear them catching each other up on the afternoon's events. "Let me know what the question was sometime?"

Hanzo kept his hand around McCree's, didn't bother to listen to Ana telling Jack about the eleven black and gold arrows, didn't mind that Orisa had found another butterfly or that Zen was coaxing it over to her.

"Certainly I will," he said softly, "Just not now."

"Sure," McCree nodded, and together they stood hand in hand, smiling quietly at each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed! The young love chapter will be dropped in here later, as soon as I get it under control. Thank you for reading ヽ(〃･ω･)ﾉ  
> This was fact checked by the undaunted Daishar and beta read by the incredible and extremely patient [emotionalmorphine](http://emotionalmorphine.tumblr.com/)! You're so gd cool thank you <3  
> I have a [Tumblr](http://leoandlancer.tumblr.com), please come and say hi if you'd care to!


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